Morals and dogma of the ancient and accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

THE LliiKAUl
UNIVERSITY OF '

LOS ANGELAS

MORALS AND DOGMA

OF THE

ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE

OF

PREPARED FOR THE

SUPREME COUNCIL OF THE THIRTY-THIRD DEGREE,

SOUTHERN JURISDICTION OF THE UNITED STATES,

AND

PUBLISHED BY ITS AUTHORITY.

CHARLESTON

A/. M.\ 5641

ENTERKU according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by

ALBERT PIKE,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

ENTEKFD according to Act of Congress, in tne year 190), by
THE SUPREME COUNCIL OF THE SOUTHERN

JURISDICTION, A. A. S. P.. U. S. A.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE.

THE following work has been prepared by authority of the Su-
preme Council of the Thirty-third Degree, for the Southern
Jurisdiction of the United States, by the Grand Commander,
and is now published by its direction. It contains the
Lectures of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in that juris-
diction, and is specially intended to be read and studied by the
Brethren of that obedience, in connection with the Rituals of the
Degrees. It is hoped and expected that each will furnish himself
with a copy, and make himself familiar with it ; for which pur-
pose, as the cost of the work consists entirely in the printing and
binding, it will be furnished at a price as moderate as possible.
No individual will receive pecuniary profit from it, except the
agents for its sale.

It has been copyrighted, to prevent its republication elsewhere,
and the copyright, like those of all the other works prepared for
the Supreme Council, has been assigned to Trustees for that Body.
Whatever profits may accrue from it will be devoted to purposes
of charity.

The Brethren of the Rite in the United States and Canada will
be afforded the opportunity to purchase it, nor is it forbidden that
other Masons shall ; but they will not be solicited to do so.

In preparing this work, the Grand Commander has been about
equally Author and Compiler ; since he has extracted quite
half its contents from the works of the best writers and most phi-
losophic or eloquent thinkers. Perhaps it would have been bet-
ter and more acceptable, if he had extracted more and written
less.

Still, perhaps half of it is his own; and, in incorporating here

20G5484

iv PREFACE.

the thoughts and words of others, he has continually changed
and added to the language, often intermingling, in the same sen-
tences, his own words with theirs. It not being intended for the
world at large, he has felt at liberty to make, from all accessible
sources, a Compendium of the Morals and Dogma of the Rite, to
re-mould sentences, change and add to words and phrases, com-
bine them with his own, and use them as if they were his own,
to be dealt with at his pleasure and so availed of as to make the
whole most valuable for the purposes intended. He claims, there-
fore, little of the merit of authorship, and has not cared to dis-
tinguish his own from that which he has taken from other sources,
being quite willing that every portion of the book, in turn, may
be regarded as borrowed from some old and better writer.

The teachings of these Readings are not sacramental, so far as
they go beyond the realm of Morality into those of other domains
of Thought and Truth. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
uses the word "Dogma" in its true sense, of doctrine, or teaching;
and is not dogmatic in the odious sense of that term. Every one
is entirely free to reject and dissent from whatsoever herein may
seem to him to be untrue or unsound. It is only required of him
that he shall weigh what is taught, and give it fair hearing and
unprejudiced judgment. Of course, the ancient theosophic and
philosophic speculations are not embodied as part of the doctrines
of the Rite ; but because it is of interest and profit to know what
the Ancient Intellect thought upon these subjects, and because
nothing so conclusively proves the radical difference between our
human and the animal nature, as the capacity of the human
mind to entertain such speculations in regard to itself and the
Deity. But as to these opinions themselves, we may say, in the
words of the learned Canonist, Ludovicus Gomez : " Opiniones
secundum varietatem temporum senescant et intermoriantur,
aliceque diversoz vel prioribus contraries renascantur et deinde
pubescant"

MORALS AND DOGMA.

LODGE OF PERFECTION.

MORALS AND DOGMA.

i.
APPRENTICE.

THE TWELVE-INCH RULE AND THE COMMON GAVEL.

FORCE, unregulated or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the
void, like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam
unconfined by science ; but, striking in the dark, and its blows
meeting only the air, they recoil, and bruise itself. It is destruc-
tion and ruin. It is the volcano, the earthquake, the cyclone; —
not growth and progress. It is Polyphemus blinded, striking at
random, and falling headlong among the sharp rocks by the
impetus of his own blows. ^

The blind Force of the people is a Force that must be econ-
omized, and also managed, as the blind Force of steam, lifting the
ponderous iron arms and turning the large wheels, is made to bore
and rifle the cannon and to weave the most delicate lace. It must
be regulated by Intellect. Intellect is to the people and the people's
Force, what the slender needle of the compass is to the ship — its
soul, always counsellingthe huge mass ofwood and iron, and always
pointing to the north. To attack the citadels built up on all sides
against the human race by superstitions, despotisms, and pre-

2 MORALS A ND DOGMA.

judices, the Force must have a brain and a law. Then its deeds
of daring produce permanent results, and there is real progress.
Then there are sublime conquests. Thought is a force, and phi-
losophy should be an energy, finding its aim and its effects in the
amelioration of mankind. The two great motors are Truth and
Love. When all these Forces are combined, and guided by the
Intellect, and regulated by the RULE of Right, and Justice, and of
combined and systematic movement and effort, the great revolution
prepared for by the ages will begin to march. The POWER of the
Deity Himself is in equilibrium with His WISDOM. Hence the only
results are HARMONY.

It is because Force is ill regulated, that revolutions prove fail-
ures. Therefore it is that so often insurrections, coming from
those high mountains that domineer over the moral horizon. Jus-
tice, Wisdom, Reason, Right, built of the purest snow of the ideal,
after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky
in their transparency, and been swollen by a hundred affluents, in
the majestic path of triumph, suddenly lose themselves in quag-
mires, like a Californian river in the sands.

The onward march of the human race requires that the heights
around it should blaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage.
Deeds of daring dazzle history, and form one class of the guiding
lights of man. They are the stars and coruscations from that
great sea of electricity, the Force inherent in the people. To strive,
to brave all risks, to perish, to persevere, to be true to one's self, to
grapple body to body with destiny, to surprise defeat by the little
terror it inspires, now to confront unrighteous power, now to defy
intoxicated triumph — these are the examples that the nations need,
and the light that electrifies them.

There are immense Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath
society ; in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and
destitution, vices and crimes that reek and simmer in the darkness
in that populace below the people, of great cities. There disinter-
estedness vanishes, every one howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws
for himself. Ideas are ignored, and of progress there is no thought.
This populace has two mothers, both of them step-mothers — Igno-
rance and Misery. Want is their only guide — for the appetite alone
they crave satisfaction. Yet even these may be "employed. The
lowly sand we trample upon, cast into the furnace, melted, purified
by fire, may become resplendent crystal. They have the brute

APPRENTICE. 3

force of the HAMM-ER, but their blows help on the great cause,
when struck within the lines traced by the RULE held by wisdom
and discretion.

Yet it is this very Force of the people, this Titanic power of the
giants, that builds the fortifications of tyrants, and is embodied in
their armies. Hence the possibility of such tyrannies as those of
which it has been said, that "Rome smells worse under Vitellius
than under Sulla. Under Claudius and under Domitian there is a
deformity of baseness corresponding to the ugliness of the tyranny.
The foulness of the slaves is a direct result of the atrocious base-
ness of the despot. A miasma exhales from these crouching con-
sciences that reflect the master ; the public authorities are unclean,
hearts are collapsed, consciences shrunken, souls puny. This is
so under Caracalla, it is so under Commodus, it is so under Helio-
gabalus, while from the Roman senate, under Csesar, there comes
only the rank odor peculiar to the eagle's eyrie."

It is the force of the people that sustains all these despotisms,
the basest as well as the best. That force acts through armies ;
and these oftener enslave than liberate. Despotism there applies
the RULE. Force is the MACE of steel at the saddle-bow of the
knight or of the bishop in armor. Passive obedience by force sup-
ports thrones and oligarchies, Spanish kings, and Venetian senates.
Might, in an army wielded by tyranny, is the enormous sum total
of utter weakness ; and so Humanity wages war against Humanity,
in despite of Humanity. So a people willingly submits to despot-
ism, and its workmen submit to be despised, and its soldiers to be
whipped ; therefore it is that battles lost by a nation are often
progress attained. Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is
silent, reason sometimes speaks.

Tyrants use the force of the people to chain and subjugate — that
is, enyok'e the people. Then they plough with them as men do
with oxen yoked. Thus the spirit of liberty and innovation is
reduced by bayonets, and principles are struck dumb by cannon-
shot; while the monks mingle with the troopers, and the Church
militant and jubilant, Catholic or Puritan, sings Te Deums for
victories over rebellion.

The military power, not subordinate to the civil power, again
the HAMMER or MACE of FORCE, independent of the RULE, is an
armed tyranny, born full-grown, as Athene sprung from the brain
of Zeus. It spawns a dynasty, and begins with Caesar to rot into

4 MORALS AND DOGMA.

•

Vitellius and Commodus. At the present day it inclines to begin
where former dynasties ended.

Constantly the people put forth immense strength, only to end
in immense weakness. The force of the people is exhausted in
indefinitely prolonging things long since dead ; in governing man-
kind by embalming old dead tyrannies of Faith ; restoring dilapi-
dated dogmas ; regilding faded, worm-eaten shrines ; whitening
and rouging ancient and barren superstitions; saving society by
multiplying parasites; perpetuating superannuated institutions;
enforcing the worship of symbols as the actual means of salvation ;
and tying the dead corpse of the Past, mouth to mouth, with the
living Present. Therefore it is that it is one of the fatalities of
Humanity to be condemned to eternal struggles with phantoms,
with superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, the formulas
of error, and the pleas of tyranny. Despotisms, seen in the past,
become respectable, as the mountain, bristling with volcanic rock,
rugged and horrid, seen through the haze of distance is blue and
smooth and beautiful. The sight of a single dungeon of tyranny
is worth more, to dispel illusions, and create a holy hatred of
despotism, and to direct FORCE aright, than the most eloquent
volumes. The French should have preserved the Bastile as a
perpetual lesson ; Italy should not destroy the dungeons of the
Inquisition. The Force of the people maintained the Power that
built its gloomy cells, and placed the living in their granite sep-
ulchres.

The FORCE of the people cannot, by its unrestrained and fitful
action, maintain and continue in action and existence a free
Government once created. That Force must be limited, re-
strained, conveyed by distribution into different channels, and by
roundabout courses, to outlets, whence it is to issue as the law,
action, and decision of the State ; as the wise old Egyptian kings
conveyed in different canals, by sub-division, the swelling waters
of the Nile, and compelled them to fertilize and not devastate the
land. There must be the jus et norma, the law and Rule, or
Gauge, of constitution and law, within which the public force
must act. Make a breach in either, and the great steam-hammer,
with its swift and ponderous blows, crushes all the machinery to
atoms, and, at last, wrenching itself away, lies inert and dead amid
the ruin it has wrought.

The FORCE of the people, or the popular will, in action and

APPRENTICE. 5

exerted, symbolized by the GAVEL, regulated and guided by and
acting within the limits of LAW and ORDER, symbolized by the

TWENTY-FOUR-INCH RULE, has for its fruit LIBERTY, EQUALITY,

and FRATERNITY, — liberty regulated by law; equality of rights in
the eye of the law ; brotherhood with its duties and obligations as
well as its benefits.

You will hear shortly of the Rough ASHLAR and the Perfect
ASHLAR, as part of the jewels of the Lodge. The rough Ashlar is
said to be "a stone, as taken from the quarry, in its rude and
natural state." The perfect Ashlar is said to be "a stone made
ready by the hands of the workmen, to be adjusted by the working-
tools of the Fellow-Craft." We shall not repeat the explanations
of these symbols given by the York Rite. You may read them in
its printed monitors. They are declared to allude to the self-
improvement of the individual craftsman, — a continuation of the
same superficial interpretation.

The rough Ashlar is the PEOPLE, as a mass, rude and unor-
ganized. The perfect Ashlar, or cubical stone, symbol of perfection,
is the STATE, the rulers deriving their powers from the consent
of the governed ; the constitution and laws speaking the will of
the people ; the government harmonious, symmetrical, efficient, —
its powers properly distributed and duly adjusted in equilib-
rium.

If we delineate a cube on a plane surface thus:

we have visible three faces, and nine external lines, drawn between
seven points. The complete cube has three more faces, making
six ; three more lines, making twelve; and one more point, making
eight. As the number 12 includes the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and
3 times 3, or 9, and is produced by adding the sacred number 3 to
9; while its own two figures, I, 2, the unit or monad, and duad,
added together, make the same sacred number 3 ; it was called the
perfect number ; and the cube became the symbol of perfection.
Produced by FORCE, acting by RULE; hammered in accordance

6 MORALS AND DOGMA.

with lines measured by the Gauge, out of the rough Ashlar, it is
an appropriate symbol of the Force of the people, expressed as the
constitution and law of the State ; and of the State itself the three
visible faces represent the three departments, — the Executive,
which executes the laws ; the Legislative, which makes the laws ;
the Judiciary, which interprets the laws, applies and enforces
them, between man and man, between the State and the citizens.
The three invisible faces, are Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, —
the threefold soul of the State — its vitality, spirit, and intellect.

Though Masonry neither usurps the place of, nor apes religion,
prayer is an essential part of our ceremonies. It is the aspiration
of the soul toward the Absolute and Infinite Intelligence, which
is the One Supreme Deity, most feebly and misunderstandingly
characterized as an " ARCHITECT/' Certain faculties of man are
directed toward the Unknown — thought, meditation, prayer.
The unknown is an ocean, of which conscience is the compass.
Thought, meditation, prayer, are the great mysterious pointings
of the needle. It is a spiritual magnetism that thus connects the
human soul with the Deity. These majestic irradiations of the soul
pierce through the shadow toward the light.

It is but a shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because
it is not possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change
His plans. He produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by
the instrumentality of the forces of nature, all of which are
His forces. Our own are part of these. Our free agency and
our will are forces. We do not absurdly cease to make efforts to
attain wealth or happiness, prolong life, and continue health,
because we cannot by any effort change what is predestined. If
the effort also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of
our free will. So, likewise, we pray. Will is a force. Thought is
a force. Prayer is a force. Why should it not be of the law of
God, that prayer, like Faith and Love, should have its effects? Man
is not to be comprehended as a starting-point, or progress as a goal,
without those two great forces, Faith and Love. Prayer is sublime.
Orisons that beg and clamor are pitiful. To deny the efficacy of
prayer, is to deny that of Faith, Love, and Effort. Yet the effects
produced, when our hand, moved by our will, launches a pebble
into the ocean, never cease ; and every uttered word is registered
for eternitv upon the invisible air.

APPRENTICE. /

Every Lodge is a Temple, and as a whole, and in its details
symbolic. The Universe itself supplied man with the model for
the first temples reared to the Divinity. The arrangement of the
Temple of Solomon, the symbolic ornaments which formed its
chief decorations, and the dress of the High-Priest, all had refer-
ence to the order of the Universe, as then understood. The Temple
contained many emblems of the seasons — the sun, the moon, the
planets, the constellations Ursa Major and Minor, the zodiac, the
elements, and the other parts of the world. It is the Master of
this Lodge, of the Universe, Hermes, of whom Khurum is the
representative, that is one of the lights of the Lodge.

For further instruction as to the symbolism of the heavenly
bodies, and of the sacred numbers, and of the temple and its
details, you must wait patiently until you advance in Masonry, in
the mean time exercising your intellect in studying them for your-
self. To study and seek to interpret correctly the symbols of the
Universe, is the work of the sage and philosopher. It is to decipher
the writing of God, and penetrate into His thoughts.

This is what is asked and answered in our catechism, in regard
to the Lodge.

******

A " Lodge" is defined to be "an assemblage of Freemasons, duly
congregated, having the sacred writings, square, and compass, and
a charter, or warrant of constitution, authorizing them to work."
The room or place in which they meet, representing some part of
King Solomon's Temple, is also called the Lodge ; and it is that we
are now considering.

It is said to be supported by three great columns, WISDOM,
FORCE or STRENGTH, and BEAUTY, represented by the Master, the
Senior Warden, and the Junior Warden ; and these are said to be
the columns that support the Lodge, "because Wisdom, Strength,
and Beauty, are the perfections of everything, and nothing can
endure without them." " Because," the York Rite says, "it is
necessary that there should be Wisdom to conceive, Strength to
support, and Beauty to adorn, all great and important undertak-
ings." "Know ye not," says the Apostle Paul, "that ye are the
temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If
any man desecrate the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for
the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."

The Wisdom and Power of the Deity are in equilibrium. The

MORALS AND DOGMA.

la\vs of nature and the moral laws are not the mere despotic man-
dates of His Omnipotent will ; for, then they might be changed by
Him, and order become disorder, and good and right become evil
and wrong; honesty and loyalty, vices; and fraud, ingratitude, and
vice, virtues. Omnipotent power, infinite, and existing alone,
would necessarily not be constrained to consistency. Its decrees
and laws could not be immutable. The laws of God are not ob-
ligatory on us, because they are the enactments of His POWER, or
the expression of His WILL ; but because they express His infinite
WISDOM. They are not right because they are His laws, but His
laws because they are right. From the equilibrium of infinite
wisdom and infinite force, results perfect harmony, in physics and
in the moral universe. Wisdom, Power, and Harmony constitute
one Masonic triad. They have other and profounder meanings,
that may at some time be unveiled to you.

As to the ordinary and commonplace explanation, it may be
added, that the wisdom of the Architect is displayed in combining,
as only a skillful Architect can do, and as God has done every-
where,— for example, in the tree, the human frame, the egg, the
cells of the honeycomb — strength, with grace, beauty, symmetry,
proportion, lightness, ornamentation. That, too, is the perfec-
tion of the orator and poet — to combine force, strength, energy,
with grace of style, musical cadences, the beauty of figures, the
play and irradiation of imagination and fancy; and so, in a
State, the warlike and industrial force of the people, and their
Titanic strength, must be combined with the beauty of the
arts, the sciences, and the intellect, if the State would scale
the heights of excellence, and the people be really free. Har-
mony in this, as in all the Divine, the material, and the
human, is the result of equilibrium, of the sympathy and opposite
action of contraries; a single Wisdom above them holding the
beam of the scales. To reconcile the moral law, human responsi-
bility, free-will, with the absolute power of God ; and the existence
of evil with His absolute wisdom, and goodness, and mercy, — these
are the great enigmas of the Sphynx.

You entered the Lodge between two columns. They represent
the two which stood in the porch of the Temple, on each side of
the great eastern gateway. These pillars, of bronze, four fingers
breadth in thickness, were, according to the most authentic

APPRENTICE. 9

account — that in the First and that in the Second Book of Kings,
confirmed in Jeremiah— eighteen cubits high, with a capital five
cubits high. The shaft of each was four cubits in diameter. A
cubit is one foot and j7^. That is, the shaft of each was a little
over thirty feet eight inches in height, the capital of each a little
over eight feet six inches in height, and the diameter of the shaft
six feet ten inches. The capitals were enriched by pomegranates
of bronze, covered by bronze net-work, and ornamented with
wreaths of bronze ; and appear to have imitated the shape of the
seed-vessel of the lotus or Egyptian lily, a sacred symbol to the
Hindus and Egyptians. The pillar or column on the right, or
in the south, was named, as the Hebrew word is rendered in our
translation of the Bible, JACHIN : and that on the left BOAZ. Our
translators say that the first w£>rd means, "He shall establish;" and
tne second, "In it is strength."

These columns were imitations, by Khurum, the Tyrian artist,
of the great columns consecrated to the Winds and Fire, at the
entrance to the famous Temple of Malkarth, in the city of
Tyre. It is customary, in Lodges of the York Rite, to see a celes-
tial globe on one, and a terrestrial globe on the other ; but these
are not warranted, if the object be to imitate the original two
columns of the Temple. The symbolic meaning of these columns
we shall leave for the present unexplained, only adding that
Entered Apprentices keep their working-tools in the column
JACHIN ; and giving you the etymology and literal meaning of
the two names.

The word Jachin, in Hebrew, is j'O1'. It was probably pro-
nounced Ya-kayan, and meant, as a verbal noun, He that strength-
ens; and thence, firm, stable, upright.

The word Boaz is TJD, Baaz. TJ? means Strong, Strength, Power,
Might, Refuge, Source of Strength, a Fort. The 3 prefixed means
" with" or " in," and gives the word the force of the Latin
gerund, roborando — Strengthening.

The former word also means he will establish, or plant in an
erect position — from the verb T|3 Kun} he stood erect. It prob-
ably meant Active and Vivifying Energy and Force; and Boaz,
Stability, Permanence, in the passive sense.

The Dimensions of the Lodge, our Brethren of the York Rite
say, " are unlimited, and its covering no less than the canopy of
Heaven." " To this object," they say, " the mason's mind is con-

2

10 MORALS AND DOGMA.

tinually directed, and thither he hopes at last to arrive by the
aid of the theological ladder which Jacob in his vision saw
ascending from earth to Heaven ; the three principal rounds of
which are denominated Faith, Hope, and Charity ; and which
admonish us to have Faith in God, Hope in Immortality, and
Charity to all mankind." Accordingly a ladder, sometimes with
nine rounds, is seen on the chart, resting at the bottom on the
earth, its top in the clouds, the stars shining above it ; and this is
deemed to represent that mystic ladder, which Jacob saw in his
dream, set up on the earth, and the top of it reaching to Heaven,
with the angels of God ascending and descending on it. The
addition of the three principal rounds to the symbolism, is wholly
modern and incongruous.

The ancients counted se\en planets, thus arranged: the Moon,
Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There
were seven heavens and seven spheres of these planets ; on all
the monuments of Mithras are seven altars or pyres, consecrated
to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps of the golden
candelabrum in the Temple. That these represented the planets,
we are assured by Clemens of Alexandria, in his Stromata, and by
Philo Judaeus.

To return to its source in the Infinite, the human soul, the
ancients held, had to ascend, as it had descended, through the
seven spheres. The Ladder by which it reascends, has, according
to Marsilius Ficinus, in his Commentary on the Ennead of Plo-
tinus, seven degrees or steps ; and in the Mysteries of Mithras,
carried to Rome under the Emperors, the ladder, with its seven
rounds, was a symbol referring to this ascent through the spheres
of the seven planets. Jacob saw the Spirits of God ascending and
descending on it ; and above it the Deity Himself. The Mithraic
Mysteries were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at
the four equinoctial and solstitial points of the zodiac ; and the
seven planetary spheres were represented, which souls needs must
traverse in descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the
elements that envelop the earth ; and seven gates were marked,
one for each planet, through which they pass, in descending or
returning.

We learn this from Celsus, in Origen, who says that the sym-
bolic image of this passage among the stars, used in the Mithraic
Mysteries, was a ladder reaching from earth to Heaven, divided

APPRENTICE. 1 1

into seven steps or stages, to each of which was a gate, and at the
summit an eighth one, that of the fixed stars. The symbol was
the same as that of the seven stages of Borsippa, the Pyramid
of vitrified brick, near Babylon, built of seven stages, and each of
a different color. In the Mithraic ceremonies, the candidate went
through seven stages of initiation, passing through many fearful
trials — and of these the high ladder with seven rounds or steps
was the symbol.

You see the Lodge, its details and ornaments, by its Lights.
You have already heard what these Lights, the greater and lesser,
are said to be, and how they are spoken of by our Brethren of the
York Rite.

The Holy Bible, Square, and Compasses, are not only styled the
Great Lights in Masonry, but they are also technically called the
Furniture of the Lodge ; and, as you have seen, it is held that
there is no Lodge without them. This has sometimes been made
a pretext for excluding Jews from our Lodges, because they can-
not regard the New Testament as a holy book. The Bible is an
indispensable part of the furniture of a Christian Lodge, only
because it is the sacred book of the Christian religion. The
Hebrew Pentateuch in a Hebrew Lodge, and the Koran in a
Mohammedan one, belong on the Altar ; and one of these, and the
Square and Compass, properly understood, are the Great Lights
by which a Mason must walk and work.

The obligation of the candidate is always to be taken on the
sacred book or books of his religion, that he may deem it more
solemn and binding ; and therefore it was that you were asked of
what religion you were. We have no other concern with your
religious creed.

The Square is a right angle, formed by two right lines. It is
adapted only to a plane surface, and belongs only to geometry,
earth-measurement, that trigonometry which deals only with
planes, and with the earth, which the ancients supposed to be a
plane. The Compass describes circles, and deals with spherical
trigonometry, the science of the spheres and heavens. The for-
mer, therefore, is an emblem of what concerns the earth and the
body ; the latter of what concerns the heavens and the soul. Yet
the Compass is also used in plane trigonometry, as in erecting per-
pendiculars ; and, therefore, you are reminded that, although in
this Degree both points of the Compass are under the Square, and

12 MORALS AND DOGMA.

you are now dealing only with the moral and political meaning of
the symbols, and not with their philosophical and spiritual mean-
ings, still the divine ever mingles with the human; with the
earthly the spiritual intermixes ; and there is something spiritual
in the commonest duties of life. The nations are not bodies-
politic alone, but also souls-politic ; and woe to that people which,
seeking the material only, forgets that it has a soul. Then we
have a race, petrified in dogma, which presupposes the absence of
a soul and the presence only of memory and instinct, or demoral-
ized by lucre. Such a nature can never lead civilization. Genu-
flexion before the idol or the dollar atrophies the muscle which
walks and the will which moves. Hieratic or mercantile absorp-
tion diminishes the radiance of a people, lowers its horizon by
lowering its level, and deprives it of that understanding of the
universal aim, at the same time human and divine, which makes
the missionary nations. A free people, forgetting that it has a soul
to be cared for, devotes all its energies to its material advancement.
If it make war, it is to subserve its commercial interests. The
citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp, and luxury
as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth rapidly,
and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes, of monstrous
opulence and monstrous misery; all the enjoyment to a few, all
the privations to the rest, that is to say, to the people ; Privilege,
Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from Labor itself :
a false and dangerous situation, which, making Labor a blinded
and chained Cyclops, in the mine, at the forge, in the workshop, at
the loom, in the field, over poisonous fumes, in miasmatic cells, in
unventilated factories, founds public power upon private misery,
and plants the greatness of the State in the suffering of the indi-
vidual. It is a greatness ill constituted, in which all the material
elements are combined, and into which no moral element enters.
If a people, like a star, has the right of eclipse, the light ought to
return. The eclipse should not degenerate into night.

The three lesser, or the Sublime Lights, you have heard, are the
Sun, the Moon, and the Master of the Lodge ; and you have heard
what our Brethren of the York Rite say in regard to them, and
why they hold them to be Lights of the Lodge. But the Sun and
Moon do in no sense light the Lodge, unless it be symbolically,
and then the lights are not they, but those things of which they
are the symbols. Of what they are the symbols the Mason in that

APPRENTICE. 13

Rite is not told. Nor does the Moon in any sense rule the night
with regularity.

The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative
power of the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life ;
and God was the source from which all light flowed ; the essence
of Light, the Invisible Fire, developed as Flame manifested as
light and splendor. The Sun was His manifestation and visible
:mage; and the Sabseans worshipping the Light — God, seemed
to worship the Sun, in whom they saw the manifestation of the
Deity.

The Moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to
produce, the female, of which the life-giving power and energy \
was the male. It was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis,
or Diana. The "Master of Life" was the Supreme Deity, above
both, and manifested through both; Zeus, the Son of Saturn,
become King of the Gods ; Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, become
the Master of Life ; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras, become the
author of Light and Life and Truth.

4> £ if 4i $ 41

The Master of Light and Life, the Sun and the Moon, are sym-
bolized in every Lodge by the Master and Wardens: and this
makes it the duty of the Master to dispense light to the Brethren,
by himself, and through the Wardens, who are his ministers.

"Thy sun," says ISAIAH to Jerusalem, "shall no more go down,
neither shall thy moon withdraw itself ; for the LORD shall be
thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit
the land forever." Such is the type of a free people.

Our northern ancestors worshipped this tri-une Deity; ODIN,
the Almighty FATHER ; FREA, his wife, emblem of universal mat-
ter; and THOR, his son, the mediator. But above all these was
the Supreme God, " the author of everything that existeth, the
Eternal, the Ancient, the Living and Awful Being, the Searcher
into concealed things, the Being that never changeth." In the
Temple of Eleusis (a sanctuary lighted only by a window in the
roof, and representing the Universe), the images of the Sun,
Moon, and Mercury, were represented.

"The Sun and Moon," says the learned Bro.'. DELAUNAY,
" represent the two grand principles of all generations, the active
and passive, the male and the female. The Sun represents the

14 MORALS AND DOGMA.

actual light. He pours upon the Moon his fecundating rays ; both
shed their light upon their offspring, the Blazing Star, or HORUS,
and the three form the great Equilateral Triangle, in the centre of
which is the omnific letter of the Kabalah, by which creation is
said to have been effected."

The ORNAMENTS of a Lodge are said to be " the Mosaic Pave-
ment, the Indented Tessel, and the Blazing Star." The Mosaic Pave-
ment, chequered in squares or lozenges, is said to represent the
ground-floor of King Solomon's Temple ; and the Indented Tessel
"that beautiful tesselated border which surrounded it." The
Blazing Star in the centre is said to be '"an emblem of Divine
Providence, and commemorative of the star which appeared to
guide the wise men of the East to the place of our Saviour's
nativity." But " there was no stone seen" within the Temple.
The walls were covered with planks of cedar, and the floor was
covered with planks of fir. There is no evidence that there was
such a pavement or floor in the Temple, or such a bordering. In
England, anciently, the Tracing-Board was surrounded with an
indented border; and it is only in America that such a border is
put around the Mosaic pavement. The tesserae, indeed, are the
squares or lozenges of the pavement. In England, also, " the
indented or denticulated border" is called "tesselated," because it
has four "tassels," said to represent Temperance, Fortitude, Pru-
dence, and Justice. It was termed the Indented Trassel ; but this
is a misuse of words. It is a tesserated pavement, with an indented
border round it.

The pavement, alternately black and white, symbolizes, whether
so intended or not, the Good and Evil Principles of the Egyptian
and Persian creed. It is the warfare of Michael and Satan, of the
Gods and Titans, of Balder and Lok ; between light and shadow,
which is darkness ; Day and Night ; Freedom and Despotism ;
Religious Liberty and the Arbitrary Dogmas of a Church that
thinks for its votaries, and whose Pontiff claims to be infallible,
and the decretals of its Councils to constitute a gospel.

The edges of this pavement, if in lozenges, will necessarily be
indented or denticulated, toothed like a saw ; and to complete and
finish it a bordering is necessary. It is completed by tassels as
ornaments at the corners. If these and the bordering have any
symbolic meaning, it is fanciful and arbitrary.

To find in the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the

APPRENTICE. 15

Divine Providence, is also fanciful ; and to make it commemorative
of the Star that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a
meaning comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS,
or the Dog-star, the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile ; the
God ANUBIS, companion of Isis in her search for the body of
OSIRIS, her brother and husband. Then it became the image of
HORUS, the son of OSIRIS, himself symbolized also by the Sun,
the author of the Seasons, and the God of Time ; Son of Isis, who
was the universal nature, himself the primitive matter, inexhaust-
ible source of Life, spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of all
beings. It was HERMES, also, the Master of Learning, whose
name in Greek is that of the God Mercury. It became the sacred
and potent sign or character of the Magi, the PENTALPHA, and is
the significant emblem of Liberty and Freedom, blazing with a
steady radiance amid the weltering elements of good and evil of
Revolutions, and promising serene skies and fertile seasons to the
nations, after the storms of change and tumult.

In the East of the Lodge, over the Master, inclosed in a. tri-
angle, is the Hebrew letter YUD [ •» or (tf ] . In the English and
American Lodges the Letter G.'. is substituted for this, as the
initial of the word GOD, with as little reason as if the letter D.,
initial of DIEU, were used in French Lodges instead of the proper
letter. YOD is, in the Kabalah, the symbol of Unity, of the
Supreme Deity, the first letter of the Holy Name; and also a
symbol of the Great Kabalistic Triads. To understand its mystic
meanings, you must open the pages of the Sohar and Siphra de
Zeniutha, and other kabalistic books, and ponder deeply on their
meaning. It must suffice to say, that it is the Creative Energy of
the Deity, is represented as a point, and that point in the centre of
the Circle of immensity. It is to us in this Degree, the symbol of
that unmanifested Deity, the Absolute, who has no name.

Our French Brethren place this letter YOD in the centre of the
Blazing Star. And in the old Lectures, our ancient English
Brethren said, "The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers
us to that grand luminary, the Sun, which enlightens the earth,
and by its genial influence dispenses blessings to mankind." They
called it also in the same lectures, an emblem of PRUDENCE. The
word Prudentia means, in its original and fullest signification,
Foresight; and, accordingly, the Blazing Star has been regarded
as an emblem of Omniscience, or the All-seeing Eye, which to the

K: MORALS AND DOGMA.

Egyptian Initiates was the emblem of Osiris, the Creator. With
the VO"D in the centre, it has the kabalistic meaning of the Divine
Energy, manifested as Light, creating the Universe.

The Jewels of the Lodge are said to be six in number. Three
are called "Movable," and three "Immovable." The SQUARE, the
LEVEL, and the PLUMB were anciently and properly called the
Movable Jewels, because they pass from one Brother to another.
It is a modern innovation to call them immovable, because they
must always be present in the Lodge. The immovable jewels are
the ROUGH ASHLAR, the PERFECT ASHLAR or CUBICAL STONE, or,
in some Rituals, the DOUBLE CUBE, and the TRACING-BOARD, or
TRESTLE-BOARD.

Of these jewels our Brethren of the York Rite say: "The
Square inculcates Morality; the Level, Equality; and the Plumb,
Rectitude of Conduct." Their explanation of the immovable
Jewels may be read in their monitors.

< # * * * * *

Our Brethren of the York Rite say that "there is represented
in every well-governed Lodge, a certain point, within a circle ;
the point representing an individual Brother; the Circle, the
boundary line of his conduct, beyond which he is never to suffer
his prejudices or passions to betray him."

This is not to interpret the symbols of Masonry. It is said by
some, \vith a nearer approach to interpretation, that the point
within the circle represents God in the centre of the Universe. It
is a common Egyptian sign for the Sun and Osiris, and is still
used as the astronomical sign of the great luminary. In the Ka-
balah the point is YO"D, the Creative Energy of God, irradiating
with light the circular space which God, the universal Light,
left vacant, wherein to create the worlds, by withdrawing His
substance of Light back on all sides from one point.

Our Brethren add that, "this circle is embordered by two
perpendicular parallel lines, representing Saint John the Baptist
and Saint John the Evangelist, and upon the top rest the Holy
Scriptures" (an open book). "In going round this circle," they
say, "we necessarily touch upon these two lines as well as upon
the Holy. Scriptures ; and while a Mason keeps himself circum-
scribed within their precepts, it is impossible that he should
materially err."

APPRENTICE. I/

It would be a waste of time to comment upon this. Some
writers have imagined that the parallel lines represent the Tropics
of Cancer and Capricorn, which the Sun alternately touches upon
at the Summer and Winter solstices. But the tropics are not per-
pendicular lines, and the idea is merely fanciful. If the parallel
lines ever belonged to the ancient symbol, they had some more
recondite and more fruitful meaning. They probably had the
same meaning as the twin columns Jachin and Boaz. That mean-
ing is not for the Apprentice. The adept may find it in the Ka-
balah. The JUSTICE and MERCY of God are in equilibrium, and
the result is HARMONY, because a Single and Perfect Wisdom
presides over both.

The Holy Scriptures are an entirely modern addition to the
symbol, like the terrestrial and celestial globes on the columns of
the portico. Thus the ancient symbol has been denaturalized by
incongruous additions, like that of Isis weeping over the broken
column containing the remains of Osiris at Byblos.

# jj: * % % %

Masonry has its decalogue, which is a law to its Initiates. These
are its Ten Commandments :

I. ©.'. God is the Eternal, Omnipotent, Immutable WISDOM

and Supreme INTELLIGENCE and Exhaustless LOVE.
Thou shalt adore, revere, and love Him !
Thou shalt honor Him by practising the virtues!

II. O.'. Thy religion shall be, to do good because it is a pleas-

ure to thee, and not merely because it is a duty.
That thou mayest become the friend of the wise man, thou

shalt obey his precepts !
Thy soul is immortal ! Thou shalt do nothing to degrade it !

III. ©.'.Thou shalt unceasingly war against vice!

Thou shalt not do unto others that which thou wouldst not

wish them to do unto thee !
Thou shalt be submissive to thy fortunes, and keep burning

the light of wisdom !

IV. O.'. Thou shalt honor thy parents!

Thou shalt pay respect and homage to the aged !
Thou shalt instruct the young !

Thou shalt protect and defend infancy and innocence !
V. ©.'.Thou shalt cherish thy wife and thy children!
Thou shalt love thy country, and obey its laws !

l8 MORALS AND DOGMA.

VI. O.'. Thy friend shall be to thee a second self !
Misfortune shall not estrange thee from him!
Thou shalt do for his memory whatever thou wouldst do

for him. if he were living!

VII. 0.'. Thou shalt avoid and flee from insincere friendships!
Thou shalt in everything refrain from excess !
Thou shalt fear to be the cause of a stain on thy memory !
VIII. O.'. Thou shalt allow no passions to become thy master!

Thou shalt make the passions of others profitable lessons

to thyself!

Thou shalt be indulgent to error!
IX. ©.'. Thou shalt hear much: Thou shalt speak little: Thou

shalt act well!
Thou shalt forget injuries!
Thou shalt render good for evil !

Thou shalt not misuse either thy strength or thy superiority !
X. O.'. Thou shalt study to know men; that thereby thou

mayest learn to know thyself!
Thou shalt ever seek after virtue !
Thou shalt be just !
Thou shalt avoid idleness !

But the great commandment of Masonry is this : "A new com-
mandment give I unto you : that ye love one another ! He that
saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, remaineth still in
the darkness."

Such are the moral duties of a Mason. But it is also the duty
of Masonry to assist in elevating the moral and intellectual level
of society ; in coining knowledge, bringing ideas into circulation,
and causing the mind of youth to grow ; and in putting, gradually,
by the teachings of axioms and the promulgation of positive laws,
the human race in harmony with its destinies.

To this duty and work the Initiate is apprenticed. He must not
imagine that he can effect nothing, and, therefore, despairing, be-
come inert. It is in this, as in a man's daily life. Many great
deeds are done in the small struggles of life. There is, we are told,
a determined though unseen bravery, which defends itself, foot to
foot, in the darkness, against the fatal invasion of necessity and of
baseness. There are noble and mysterious triumphs, which no eye
sees, which no renown rewards, which no flourish of trumpets
salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are

APPRENTICE. 19

battle-fields, which have their heroes, — heroes obscure, but some-
times greater than those who become illustrious. The Mason
should struggle in the same manner, and with the same bravery,
against those invasions of necessity and baseness, which come to
nations as well as to men. He should meet them, too, foot to foot,
even in the darkness, and protest against the national wrongs and
follies ; against usurpation and the first inroads of that hydra,
Tyranny. There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in
indignation. It is more difficult for a people to keep than to gain
their freedom. The Protests of Truth are always needed. Con-
tinually, the right must protest against the fact. There is, in fact,
Eternity in the Right. The Mason should be the Priest and Sol-
dier of that Right. If his country should be robbed of her liber-
ties, 'he should still not despair. The protest of the Right against
the Fact persists forever. The robbery of a people never becomes
prescriptive. Reclamation of its rights is barred by no length of
time. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teutonic.
A people may endure military usurpation, and subjugated States
kneel to States and wear the yoke, while under the stress of
necessity ; but when the necessity disappears, if the people is fit to
be free, the submerged country will float to the surface and reappear,
and Tyranny be adjudged by History to have murdered its victims.
Whatever occurs, we should have Faith in the Justice and over-
ruling Wisdom of God, and Hope for the Future, and Loving-
kindness for those who are in error. God makes visible to men
His will in events ; an obscure text, written in a mysterious lan-
guage. Men make their translations of it forthwith, hasty, incor-
rect, full of faults, omissions, and misreadings. We see so short a
way along the arc of the great circle ! Few minds comprehend
the Divine tongue. The most sagacious, the most calm, the most
profound, decipher the hieroglyphs slowly; and when they arrive
with their text, perhaps the need has long gone by; there are
already twenty translations in the public square — the most incor-
rect being, as of course, the most accepted and popular. From
each translation, a party is born ; and from each misreading, a
faction. Each party believes or pretends that it has the only true
text, and each faction believes or pretends that it alone possesses
the light. Moreover, factions are blind men, who aim straight,
errors are excellent projectiles, striking skillfully, and with all the
violence that springs from false reasoning, wherever a want of logic

2O MORALS AND DOGMA.

in those who defend the right, like a defect in a cuirass, makes
them vulnerable.

Therefore it is that we shall often be discomfited in combating
error before the people. Antaeus long resisted Hercules ; and the
heads of the Hydra grew as fast as they were cut off. It is absurd
to say that Error, wounded, writhes in pain, and dus amid her
worshippers. Truth conquers slowly. There is a wondrous vital-
ity in Error. Truth, indeed, for the most part, shoots over the
heads of the masses ; or if an error is prostrated for a moment, it
is up again in a moment, and as vigorous as ever. It will not die
when the brains are out, and the most stupid and irrational errors
are the longest-lived.

Nevertheless, Masonry, which is Morality and Philosophy, must
not cease to do its duty. We never know at what moment success
awaits our efforts — generally when most unexpected — nor with
what effect our efforts are or are not to be attended. Succeed or
fail, Masonry must not bow to error, or succumb under discour-
agement. There were at Rome a few Carthaginian soldiers, taken
prisoners, who refused to bow to Flaminius, and had a little of
Hannibal's magnanimity. Masons should possess an equal great-
ness of soul. Masonry should be an energy ; finding its aim and
effect in the amelioration of mankind. Socrates should enter into
Adam, and produce Marcus Aurelius, in other words, bring forth
from the man of enjoyments, the man of wisdom. Masonry
should not be a mere watch-tower, built upon mystery, from which
to gaze at ease upon the world, with no other result than to be a
convenience for the curious. To hold the full cup of thought to the
thirsty lips of men ; to give to all the true ideas of Deity; to har-
monize conscience and science, are the province of Philosophy.
Morality is Faith in full bloom. Contemplation should lead to
action, and the absolute be practical ; the ideal be made air and
food and drink, to the human mind. Wisdom is a sacred commu-
nion. It is only on that condition that it ceases to be a sterile love
of Science, and becomes the one and supreme method by which to
unite Humanity and arouse it to concerted action. Then Philoso-
phy becomes Religion.

And Masonry, like History and Philosophy, has eternal duties —
eternal, and, at the same time, simple — to oppose: Caiaphas as
Bishop, Draco or Jefferies as Judge, Trimalcion as Legislator, and
Tiberius as Emperor. These are the symbols of the tyranny that

APPRENTICE. 21

degrades and crushes, and the corruption that defiles and infests.
In the works published for the use of the Craft we are told that
the three great tenets of a Mason's profession, are Brotherly Love,
Relief, and Truth. And it is true that a Brotherly affection and
kindness should govern us in all our intercourse and relations with
our brethren ; and a generous and liberal philanthropy actuate us
in regard to all men. To relieve the distressed is peculiarly the
duty of Masons — a sacred duty, not to be omitted, neglected, of
coldly or inefficiently complied with. It is also most true, that
Truth is a Divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue.
To be true, and to seek to find and learn the Truth, are the great
objects of every good Mason.

As the Ancients did, Masonry styles Temperance, Fortitude, U ^
Prudence, and Justice, the four cardinal virtues. They are as
necessary to nations as to individuals. The people that would be
Free and Independent, must possess Sagacity, Forethought, Fore-
sight, and careful Circumspection, all which are included in the - ••">:-
meaning of the word Prudence. It must be temperate in asserting
its rights, temperate in its councils, economical in its expenses ; it
must be bold, brave, courageous, patient under reverses, undis-
mayed by disasters, hopeful amid calamities, like Rome when she
sold the field at which Hannibal had his camp. No Cannae or
Pharsalia or Pavia or Agincourt or Waterloo must discourage her.
Let her Senate sit in their seats until the Gauls pluck them by the
beard. She must, above all things, be just, not truckling to the
strong and warring on or plundering the weak ; she must act on
the square with all nations, and the feeblest tribes ; always keep-
ing her faith, honest in her legislation, upright in all her dealings.
Whenever such a Republic exists, it will be immortal: for rash-
ness, injustice, intemperance and luxury in prosperity, and despair
and disorder in adversity, are the causes of the decay and dilapida-
tion of nations.

II.
THE FELLOW-CRAFT.

IN the Ancient Orient, all religion was more or less a mystery
and there was no divorce from it of philosophy. The popular
theology, taking the multitude of allegories and symbols for real-
ities, degenerated into a worship of the celestial luminaries, of
imaginary Deities with human feelings, passions, appetites, and
lusts, of idols, stones, animals, reptiles. The Onion was sacred
to the Egyptians, because its different layers were a symbol of the
concentric heavenly spheres. Of course the popular religion could
not satisfy the deeper longings and thoughts, the loftier aspirations
of the Spirit, or the logic of reason. The first, therefore, was
taught to the initiated in the Mysteries. There, also, it was taught
by symbols. The vagueness of symbolism, capable of many inter-
pretations, reached what the palpable and conventional creed
could not. Its indefiniteness acknowledged the abstruseness of the
subject: it treated that mysterious subject mystically: it endeav-
ored to illustrate what it could not explain ; to excite an appro-
priate feeling, if it could not develop an adequate idea; and to
make the image a mere subordinate conveyance for the conception,
which itself never became obvious or familiar.

Thus the knowledge now imparted by books and letters, was of
old conveyed by symbols ; and the priests invented or perpetuated
a display of rites and exhibitions, which were not only more at-
tractive to the eye than words, but often more suggestive and more
pregnant with meaning to the mind.

Masonry, successor of the Mysteries, still follows the ancient
manner of teaching. Her ceremonies are like the ancient mystic
shows, — not the reading of an essay, but the opening of a problem,
'requiring research, and constituting philosophy the arch-ex-
pounder. Her symbols are the instruction she gives. The lectures
are endeavors, often partial and one-sided, to interpret these sym-
bols. He who would become an accomplished Mason must not be
content merely to hear, or even to understand, the lectures; he

FELLOW-CRAFT. 2J

must, aided by them, and they having, as it were, marked out the
way for him, study, interpret, and develop these symbols for

himself.

********

Though Masonry is identical with the ancient Mysteries, it is so
only in this qualified sense : that it presents but an imperfect
image of their brilliancy, the ruins only of their grandeur, and a
system that has experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of
social events, political circumstances, and the ambitious imbecility
of its improvers. After leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modi-
fied by the habits of the different nations among whom they were
introduced, and especially by the religious systems of the countries
into which they were transplanted. To maintain the established
government, laws, and religion, was the obligation of the Initiate
everywhere ; and everywhere they were the heritage of the priests,
who were nowhere willing to make the common people co-proprie-
tors with themselves of philosophical truth.

Masonry is not the Coliseum in ruins. It is rather a Roman
palace of the middle ages, disfigured by modern architectural im-
provements, yet built on a Cyclopsean foundation laid by the Etrus-
cans, and with many a stone of the superstructure taken from
dwellings and temples of the age of Hadrian and Antoninus.

Christianity taught the doctrine of FRATERNITY; but repudi-
ated that of political EQUALITY, by continually inculcating obedi-
ence to Caesar, and to those lawfully in authority. Masonry was
the first apostle of EQUALITY. In the Monastery there is frater-
nity and equality, but no liberty. Masonry added that also, and
claimed for man the three-fold heritage, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and
FRATERNITY.

It was but a development of the original purpose of the Myste-
ries, which was to teach men to know and practice their duties to
themselves and their fellows, the great practical end of all philos-
ophy and all knowledge.

Truths are the springs from which duties flow ; and it is but a
few hundred years since a new Truth began to be distinctly seen ;

that MAN IS SUPREME OVER INSTITUTIONS, AND NOT THEY OVER

HIM. Man has natural empire over all institutions. They are
for him, according to his development ; not he for them. This
seems to us a very simple statement, one to which all men, every-
where, ought to assent. But once it was a great new Truth, — not

-'4 MORALS AND DOGMA.

revealed until governments had been in existence for at least five
thousand rears. Once revealed, it imposed new duties on men.
Man owed it to himself to be free. He owed it to his country to
seek to give her freedom, or maintain her in that possession. It
made Tyranny and Usurpation the enemies of the Human Race. It
created a general outlawry of Despots and Despotisms, temporal
and spiritual. The sphere of Duty was immensely enlarged. Pa-
triotism had, henceforth, a new and wider meaning. Free Govern-
ment, Free Thought, Free Conscience, Free Speech ! All these came
to be inalienable rights, which those who had parted with them or
been robbed of them, or whose ancestors had lost them, had the
right summarily to retake. Unfortunately, as Truths always be-
come perverted into falsehoods, and are falsehoods when misap-
plied, this Truth became the Gospel of Anarchy, soon after it was
first preached.

Masonry early comprehended this Truth, and recognized its own
enlarged duties. Its symbols then came to have a wider meaning ;
but it also assumed the mask of Stone-masonry, and borrowed its
working-tools, and so was supplied with new and apt symbols. It
aided in bringing about the French Revolution, disappeared with
the Girondists, was born again with the restoration of order, and
sustained Napoleon, because, though Emperor, he acknowledged
the right of the people to select its rulers, and was at the head of
a nation refusing to receive back its old kings. He pleaded, with
sabre, musket, and cannon, the great cause of the People against
Royalty, the right of the French people even to make a Corsican
General their Emperor, if it pleased them.

Masonry felt that this Truth had the Omnipotence of God on
its side; and that neither Pope nor Potentate could overcome it.
It was a truth dropped into the world's wide treasury, and forming
a part of the heritage which each generation receives, enlarges, and
holds in trust, and of necessity bequeaths to mankind ; the per-
sonal estate of man, entailed of nature to the end of time. And
Masonry early recognized it as true, that to set forth and develop
a truth, or any human excellence of gift or growth, is to make
greater the spiritual glory of the race; that whosoever aids the
march of a Truth, and makes the thought a thing, writes in the
same l-ine with MOSES, and with Him who died upon the cross;
and has an intellectual sympathy with the Deity Himself.

The best gift we can bestow on man is manhood. It is that

FELLOW-CRAFT. 2$

which Masonry is ordained of God to bestow on its votaries : not
sectarianism and religious dogma ; not a rudirnental morality, that
may be found in the writings of Confucius, Zoroaster, Seneca, and
the Rabbis, in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes ; not a little and cheap
common-school knowledge; but manhood and science and phi-
losophy.

Not that Philosophy or Science is in opposition to Religion. For
Philosophy is but that knowledge of God and the Soul, which is
derived from observation of the manifested action of God and the
Soul, and from a wise analogy. It is the intellectual guide which
the religious sentiment needs. The true religious philosophy of
an imperfect being, is not a system of creed, but, as SOCRATES
thought, an infinite search or approximation. Philosophy is that
intellectual and moral progress, which the religious sentiment in-
spires and ennobles.

As to Science, it could not walk alone, while religion was sta-
tionary. It consists of those matured inferences from experience
which all other experience confirms. It realizes and unites all that
was truly valuable in both the old schemes of mediation, — one
heroic, or the system of action and effort ; and the mystical theory
of spiritual, contemplative communion. " Listen to me," says
GALEN, " as to the voice of the Eleusinian Hierophant, and believe
that the study of Nature is a mystery no less important than theirs,
nor less adapted to display the wisdom and power of the Great Cre-
ator. Their lessons and demonstrations were obscure, but ours are
clear and unmistakable."

We deem that to be the best knowledge we can obtain of the
Soul of another man, which is furnished by his actions and his
life-long conduct. Evidence to the contrary, supplied by what
another man informs us that this Soul has said to his, would weigh
little against the former. The first Scriptures for the human race
were written by God on the Earth and Heavens. The reading of
these Scriptures is Science. Familiarity with the grass and trees,
the insects and the infusoria, teaches us deeper lessons of love and
faith, than we can glean from the writings of FENELON and
AUGUSTINE. The great Bible of God is ever open before mankind.

Knowledge is convertible into power, and axioms into rules of

utility and duty. But knowledge itself is not Power. Wisdom is

Power ; and her Prime Minister is JUSTICE, which is the perfected

law of TRUTH. The purpose, therefore, of Education and Science

3

26 MORALS AND DOGMA.

is to make a man wise. If knowledge does not make him so, it is
wasted, like water poured on the sands. To know the formulas of
Masonry, is of as little value, by itself, as to know so many words
and sentences in some barbarous African or Australasian dialect.
To know even the meaning of the symbols, is but little, unless that
adds to our wisdom, and also to our charity, which is to justice
like one hemisphere of the brain to the other.

Do not lose sight, then, of the true object of your studies in
Masonry. It is to add to your estate of wisdom, and not merely
to your knowledge. A man may spend a lifetime in studying a
single specialty of knowledge, — botany, conchology, or entomol-
ogy, for instance, — in committing to memory names derived from
the Greek, and classifying and reclassifying ; and yet be no wiser
than when he began. It is the great truths as to all that most
concerns a man, as to his rights, interests, and duties, that Ma-
sonry seeks to teach her Initiates.

The wiser a man becomes, the less will he be inclined to submit
tamely to the imposition of fetters or a yoke, on his conscience or
his person. For, by increase of wisdom he not only better knows
his rights, but the more highly values them, and is more conscious
of his worth and dignity. His pride then urges him to assert his
independence. He becomes better able to assert it also ; and better
able to assist others or his country, when they or she stake all, even
existence, upon the same assertion. But mere knowledge makes
no one independent, nor fits him to be free. It often only makes
him a more useful slave. Liberty is a curse to the ignorant and
brutal.

Political science has £or its object to ascertain in what manner
and by means of what institutions political and personal freedom
may be secured and perpetuated: not license, or the mere right
of every man to vote, but entire and absolute freedom of thought
and opinion, alike free of the despotism of monarch and mob and
prelate; freedom of action within the limits of the general law
enacted for all ; the Courts of Justice, with impartial Judges and
juries, open to all alike; weakness and poverty equally potent
in those Courts as power and wealth; the avenues to office and
honor open alike to all the worthy ; the military powers, in war or
peace, in strict subordination to the civil power-, arbitrary ar-
rests for acts not known to the law as crimes, impossible ; Romish
Inquisitions, Star-Chambers, Military Commissions, unknown ; the

FELLOW-CRAFT. VJ

means of instruction within reach of the children of all ; the right
of Free Speech ; and accountability of all public officers, civil and
military.

If Masonry needed to be justified for imposing political as well
as moral duties on its Initiates, it would be enough to point to the
sad history of the world. It would not even need that she should
turn back the pages of history to the chapters written by Tacitus :
that she should recite the incredible horrors of despotism under
Caligula and Domitian, Caracalla and Commodus, Vitellius and
Maximin. She need only point to the centuries of calamity
through which the gay French nation passed ; to the long oppres-
sion of the -feudal ages, of the selfish Bourbon kings ; to those
times when the peasants were robbed and slaughtered by their own
lords and princes, like sheep ; when the lord claimed the first-
fruits of the peasant's marriage-bed ; when the captured city was
given up to merciless rape and massacre ; when the State-prisons
groaned with innocent victims, and the Church blessed the ban-
ners of pitiless murderers, and sang Te Deums for the crowning
mercy of the Eve of St. Bartholomew.

We might turn over the pages, to a later chapter, — that of the
reign of the Fifteenth Louis, when young girls, hardly more than
children, were kidnapped to serve his lusts ; when lettres de cachet
filled the Bastile with persons accused of no crime, with husbands
who were in the way of the pleasures of lascivious wives and of
villains wearing orders of nobility ; when the people were ground
between the upper and the nether millstone of taxes, customs, and
excises ; and when the Pope's Nuncio and the Cardinal de la
Roche-Ayman, devoutly kneeling, one on each side of Madame
du Barry, the king's abandoned prostitute, put the slippers on her
naked feet, as she rose from the adulterous bed. Then, indeed,
suffering and toil were the two forms of man, and the people were
but beasts of burden.

The true Mason is he who labors strenuously to help his Order
effect its great purposes. Not that the Order can effect them by
itself; but that it, too, can help. It also is one of God's instru-
ments. It is a Force and a Power; and shame upon it, if it did
not exert itself, and if need be, sacrifice its children in the cause
of humanity, as Abraham was ready to offer up Isaac on the altar
of sacrifice. It will not forget that noble allegory of Curtius
leaping, all in armor, into the great yawning gulf that opened to

28 MORALS AND DOGMA.

swallow Rome. It will TRY. It shall not be its fault if the day
never comes when man will no longer have to fear a conquest, an
invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations with the armed hand,
an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage-royal, or a
birth in the hereditary tyrannies; a partition of the peoples by a
Congress, a dismemberment by the downfall of a dynasty, a com-
bat of two religions, meeting head to head, like two goats of dark-
ness on the bridge of the Infinite : when they will no longer have
to fear famine, spoliation, prostitution from distress, misery from
lack of work, and all the brigandages of chance in the forest of
events: when nations will gravitate about the Truth, like stars
about the light, each in its own orbit, without clashing or collision ;
and everywhere Freedom, cinctured with stars, crowned with the
celestial splendors, and with wisdom and justice on either hand,
will reign supreme.

In your studies s.s a Fellow-Craft you must be guided by REA-
SON, LOVE and FAITH.

We do not now discuss the differences between Reason and
Faith, and undertake to define the domain of each. But it is
necessary to say, that even in the ordinary affairs of life we are
governed far more by what we believe than by what we know; by
FAITH and ANALOGY, than by REASON. The "Age of Reason"
of the French Revolution taught, we know, what a folly it is to
enthrone Reason by itself as supreme. Reason is at fault when it
deals with the Infinite. There we must revere and believe. Not-
withstanding the calamities of the virtuous, the miseries of the
deserving, the prosperity of tyrants and the murder of martyrs,
we must believe there is a wise, just, merciful, and loving God, an
Intelligence and a Providence, supreme over all, and caring for
the minutest things and events. A Faith is a necessity to man.
Woe to him who believes nothing!

We believe that the soul of another is of a certain nature and
possesses certain qualities, that he is generous and honest, or pe-
nurious and knavish, that she is virtuous and amiable, or vicious
and ill-tempered, from the countenance alone, from little more
than a glimpse of it, without the means of knowing. We venture
our fortune on the signature of a man on the other side of the
world, whom we never saw, upon the belief that he is honest
and trustworthy. We believe that occurrences. have taken place,
upon the assertion of others. We believe that one will acts upon

FBLLOW-CRAFT. 29

another, and in the reality of a multitude of other phenomena,
that Reason cannot explain.

But we ought not to believe what Reason authoritatively denies,
that at which the sense of right revolts, that which is absurd or
self-contradictory, or at issue with experience or science, or that
which degrades the character of the Deity, and would make Him
revengeful, malignant, cruel, or unjust.

A man's Faith is as much his own as his Reason is. His Free-
dom consists as much in his faith being free as in his will being
uncontrolled by power. All the Priests and Augurs of Rome or
Greece had not the right to require Cicero or Socrates to believe in
the absurd mythology of the vulgar. All the Imaums of Mo-
hammedanism have not the right to require a Pagan to believe that
Gabriel dictated the Koran to the Prophet. All the Brahmins
that ever lived, if assembled in one conclave like the Cardinals,
could not gain a right to compel a single human being to believe
in the Hindu Cosmogony. No man or body of men can be infal-
lible, and authorized to decide what other men shall believe, as to
any tenet of faith. Except to those who first receive it, every reli-
gion and the truth of all inspired writings depend on human tes-
timony and internal evidences, to be judged of by Reason and the
wise analogies of Faith. Each man must necessarily have the
right to judge of their truth for himself; because no one man can
have any higher or better right to judge than another of equal in-
formation and intelligence.

Domitian claimed to be the Lord God ; and statues and images
of him, in silver and gold, were found throughout the known world.
He claimed to be regarded as the God of all men ; and, according to
Suetonius, began his letters thus : " Our Lord and God commands
that it should be done so and so;" and formally decreed that no
one should address him otherwise, either in writing or by word of
mouth. Palfurius Sura, the philosopher, who was his chief de-
lator, accusing those who refused to recognize his divinity, however
much he may have believed in that divinity, had not the right to
demand that a single Christian in Rome or the provinces should do
the same.

Reason is far from being the only guide, in morals or in political
science. Love or loving-kindness must keep it company, to ex-
clude fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution, to all of which a
morality too ascetic, and extreme political principles, invariably

30 MORALS AND DOGMA.

lead. We must also have faith in ourselves, and in our fellows and
the people, or we shall be easily discouraged by reverses, and our
ardor cooled by obstacles. We must not listen to Reason alone.
Force comes more from Faith and Love: and it is by the aid of
these that man scales the loftiest heights of morality, or becomes
the Saviour and Redeemer of a People. Reason must hold the
helm ; but these supply the motive power. They are the wings of
the soul. Enthusiasm is generally unreasoning; and without it,
and Love and Faith, there would have been no RIENZI, or TELL,
or SYDNEY, or any other of the great patriots whose names are
immortal. If the Deity had been merely and only All-wise and
All-mighty, He would never have created the Universe.

******

It is GENIUS that gets Power; and its prime lieutenants are
FORCE and WISDOM. The unruliest of men bend before the
leader that has the sense to see and the will to do. It is Genius
that rules with God-like Power ; that unveils, with its counsellors,
the hidden human mysteries, cuts asunder with its word the huge
knots, and builds up with its word the crumbled ruins. At its
glance fall down the senseless idols, whose altars have been on all
the high places and in all the sacred groves. Dishonesty and im-
becility stand abashed before it. Its single Yea or Nay revokes
the wrongs of ages, and is heard among the future generations.
Its power is immense, because its wisdom is immense. Genius is
the Sun of the political sphere. Force and Wisdom, its ministers,
are the orbs that carry its light into darkness, and answer it with
their solid reflecting Truth.

Development is symbolized by the use of the Mallet and Chisel ;
the development of the energies and intellect, of the individual
and the people. Genius may place itself at the head of an unin-
tellectual, uneducated, unenergetic nation; but in a free country,
to cultivate the intellect of those who elect, is the only mode of
securing intellect and genius for rulers. The world is seldom
ruled by the great spirits, except after dissolution and new birth.
In periods of transition and convulsion, the Long Parliaments, the
Robespierres and Marats, and the semi-respectabilities of intellect,
too often hold the reins of power. The Cromwells and Napoleons
come later. After Marius and Sulla and Cicero the-jhetorician,
CAESAR. The great intellect is often too sharp for the granite of
this life. Legislators may be very ordinary men; for legislation

FELLOW-CRAFT. 31

fa very ordinary work ; it is but the final issue of a million
minds.

The power of the purse or the sword, compared to that of the
spirit, is poor and contemptible. As to lands, you may have agra-
rian laws, and equal partition. But a man's intellect is all his
own, held direct from God, an inalienable fief. It is the most
potent of weapons in the hands of a paladin. If the people com-
prehend Force in the physical sense, how much more do they rev-
erence the intellectual ! Ask Hildebrand, or Luther, or Loyola.
They fall prostrate before it, as before an idol. The mastery of
mind over mind is the only conquest worth having. The other
injures both, and dissolves at a breath; rude as it is, the great
cable falls down and snaps at last. But this dimly resembles the
dominion of the Creator. It does not need a subject like that of
Peter the Hermit. If the stream be but bright and strong, it will
sweep like a spring-tide to the popular heart. Not in word only,
but in intellectual act lies the fascination. It is the homage to
the Invisible. This power, knotted with Love, is the golden chain
let down into the well of Truth, or the invisible chain that binds
the ranks of mankind together.

Influence of man over man is a law of nature, whether it be by
a great estate in land or in intellect. It may mean slavery, a
deference to the eminent human judgment. Society hangs spirit-
ually together, like the revolving spheres above. The free country,
in which intellect and genius govern, will endure. Where they
serve, and other influences govern, the national life is short. All
the nations that have tried to govern themselves by their smallest,
by the incapables, or merely respectables, have come to nought.
Constitutions and Laws, without Genius and Intellect to govern,
will not prevent decay. In that case they have the dry-rot and
the life dies out of them by degrees.

To give a nation the franchise of the Intellect is the only sure,
mode of perpetuating freedom. This will compel exertion and
generous care for the people from those on the higher seats, and
honorable and intelligent allegiance from those below. Then politi-
cal public life will protect all men from self-abasement in sensual
pursuits, from vulgar acts and low greed, by giving the noble am-
bition of just imperial rule. To elevate the people by teaching
loving-kindness and wisdom, with power to him who teaches best ;
and so to develop the free State from the rough ashlar; — this

32 MORALS AND DOGMA.

is the great labor in which Masonry desires to lend a helping
hand.

All of us should labor in building up the great monument of a
nation, the Holy House of the Temple. The cardinal virtues
must not be partitioned among men, becoming the exclusive prop-
erty of some, like the common crafts. ALL are apprenticed to
the partners, Duty and Honor.

Masonry is a march and a struggle toward the Light. For the
individual as well as the nation, Light is Virtue, Manliness, Intel-
ligence, Liberty. Tyranny over the soul or body, is darkness.
The freest people, like the freest man, is always in danger of re-
lapsing into servitude. Wars are almost always fatal to Republics.
They create tyrants, and consolidate their power. They spring, for
the most part, from evil counsels. When the small and the base are
intrusted with power, legislation and administration become but
two parallel series of errors and blunders, ending in war, calam-
ity, and the necessity for a tyrant. When the nation feels its feet
sliding backward, as if it walked on the ice, the time has come for
a supreme effort. The magnificent tyrants of the past are but the
types of those of the future. Men and nations will always sell them-
selves into slavery, to gratify their passions and obtain revenge.
The tyrant's plea, necessity, is always available; and the tyrant
once in power, the necessity of providing for his safety makes him
savage. Religion is a power, and he must control that. Inde-
pendent, its sanctuaries might rebel. Then it becomes unlawful
for the people to worship God in their own way, and the old spir-
itual despotisms revive. Men must believe as Power wills, or die ;
and even if they may believe as they will, all they have, lands,
houses, body, and soul, are stamped with the royal brand. "I am
the State," said Louis the Fourteenth to his peasants; "the very
shirts on your backs are mine, and I can take them if I will."

And dynasties so established endure, like that of the Caesars of
Rome, of the Caesars of Constantinople, of the Caliphs, the Stu-
arts, the Spaniards, the Goths, the Valois, until the race wears out,
and ends with lunatics and idiots, who still rule. There is no
ccricord among men, to end the horrible bondage. The State
fafls inwardly, as well as by the outward blows of the incoherent
elements. The furious human passions, the sleeping "human indo-
'ence, the stolid human ignorance, the rivalry of human castes, are
£ good for the kings as the swords of the Paladins. The worship-

FELLOW-CRAFT. 33

pers have all bowed so long to the old idol, that they cannot go
into the streets and choose another Grand Llama. And so the
effete State floats on down the puddled stream of Time, until the
tempest or the tidal sea discovers that the worm has consumed its

strength, and it crumbles into oblivion.

******

Civil and religious Freedom must go hand in hand ; and Perse-
cution matures them both. A people content with the thoughts
made for them by the priests of a church will be content with
Royalty by Divine Right, — the Church and the Throne mutually
sustaining each other. They will smother schism and reap infi-
delity and indifference ; and while the battle for freedom goes on
around them, they will only sink the more apathetically into servi-
tude and a deep trance, perhaps occasionally interrupted by furious
fits of frenzy, followed by helpless exhaustion.

Despotism is not difficult in any land that has only known one
master from its childhood; but there is no harder problem than
to perfect and perpetuate free government by the people them-
selves ; for it is not one king that is needed : all must be kings. It
is easy to set up Masaniello, that in a few days he may fall lower
than before. But free government grows slowly, like the individual
human faculties ; and like the forest-trees, from the inner heart
outward. Liberty is not only the common birth-right, but it is
lost as well by non-user as by mis-user. It depends far more on
the universal effort than any other human property. It has no
single shrine or holy well of pilgrimage for the nation; for its
waters should burst out freely from the whole soil.

The free popular power is one that is only known in its strength
in the hour of adversity : for all its trials, sacrifices and expecta-
tions are its own. It is trained to think for itself, and also to act
for itself. When the enslaved people prostrate themselves in the
dust before the hurricane, like the alarmed beasts of the field, the
free people stand erect before it, in all the strength of unity, in
self-reliance, in mutual reliance, with effrontery against all but
the visible hand of God. It is neither cast down by calamity nor
elated by success.

This vast power of endurance, of forbearance, of patience, and
of performance, is only acquired by continual exercise of all the
functions, like the healthful physical human vigor, like the indi-
vidual moral vigor.

34 MORALS AND DOGMA.

And the maxim is no less true than old, that eternal vigilance is
the price of liberty. It is curious to observe the universal pretext
by which the tyrants of all times take away the national liberties.
It is stated in the statutes of Edward II., that the justices and the
sheriff should no longer be elected by the people, on account of the
riots and dissensions which had arisen. The same reason was given
long before for the suppression of popular election of the bishops ;
and there is a witness to this untruth in the yet older times, when
Rome lost her freedom, and her indignant citizens declared that

tumultuous liberty is better than disgraceful tranquillity.

* * * * * *

With the Compasses and Scale, we can trace all the figures used
in the mathematics of planes, or in what are called GEOMETRY
and TRIGONOMETRY, two words that are themselves deficient
in meaning. GEOMETRY, which the letter G. in most Lodges is
said to signify, means measurement of land or the earth — or Sur-
veying; and TRIGONOMETRY, the measurement of triangles, or
figures with three sides or angles. The latter is by far the most
appropriate name for the science intended to be expressed by the
word "Geometry." Neither is of a meaning sufficiently wide :
for although the vast surveys of great spaces of the earth's sur-
face, and of coasts, by which shipwreck and calamity to mariners
are avoided, are effected by means of triangulation ; — though it
was by the same method that the French astronomers measured a
degree of latitude and so established a scale of measures on an
immutable basis ; though it is by means of the immense triangle
that has for its base a line drawn in imagination between the place
of the earth now and its place six months hence in space, and for
its apex a planet or star, that the distance of Jupiter or Sirius from
the earth is ascertained ; and though there is a triangle still more
vast, its base extending either way from us, with and past the
horizon into immensity, and its apex infinitely distant above us ;
to which corresponds a similar infinite triangle below — what is
above equalling tvhat is below, immensity equalling immensity; —
yet the Science of Numbers, to which Pythagoras attached so much
importance, and whose mysteries are found everywhere in the
ancient religions, and most of all in the Kabalah arid in the Bible, is
not sufficiently expressed by either the word " Geometry" or the
word "Trigonometry." For that science includes these, with Arith-
metic, and also with Algebra, Logarithms, the Integral and Differ-

FELLOW- CRAFT. 35

ential Calculus; and by means of it are worked out the great

problems of Astronomy or the Laws of the Stars.

* * * * * *

Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true,
in spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all tempta-
tions or menaces. Man is accountable for the w/rightness of his
doctrine, but not for the Tightness of it. Devout enthusiasm is
far easier than a good action. The end of thought is action ; the
sole purpose oi Religion is an Ethic. Theory, in political science,
is worthless, except for the purpose of being realized in practice.

In every credo, religious or political as in the soul of man, there
are two regions, the Dialectic and the Ethic ; and it is only when
the two are harmoniously blended, that a perfect discipline is
evolved. There are men who dialectically are Christians, as there
are a multitude who dialectically are Masons, and yet who are
ethically Infidels, as these are ethically of the Profane, in the
strictest sense: — intellectual believers, but practical atheists: —
men who will write you "Evidences," in perfect faith in their logic,
but cannot carry out the Christian or Masonic doctrine, owing to
the strength, or weakness, of the flesh. On the other hand, there
are many dialectical skeptics, but ethical believers, as there are
many Masons who have never undergone initiation ; and as ethics
are the end and purpose of religion, so are ethical believers the
most worthy. He who does right is better than he whr thinks right.

But you must not act upon the hypothesis that all men are
hypocrites, whose conduct does not square with their sentiments.
No vice is more rare, for no task is more difficult, than systematic
hypocrisy. When the Demagogue becomes a Usurper it does not
follow that he was all the time a hypocrite. Shallow men only so
judge of others.

The truth is, that creed has, in general, very little influence on
the conduct ; in religion, on that of the individual ; in politics, on
that of party. As a general thing, the Mahometan, in the Orient,
is far more honest and trustworthy than the Christian. A Gospel
of Love in the mouth, is an Avatar of Persecution in the heart.
Men who believe in eternal damnation and a literal sea of fire and
brimstone, incur the certainty of it, according to their creed, on
the slightest temptation of appetite or passion. Predestination
insists on the necessity of good works. In Masonry, at the least
flow of passion, one speaks ill of another behind his back ; and so

3 MORALS AND DOGMA.

far from the "Brotherhood" of Blue Masonry being real, and the
solemn pledges contained in the use of the word "Brother" being
complied with, extraordinary pains are taken to show that Masonry
is a sort of abstraction, which scorns to interfere in worldly mat-
ters. The rule may be regarded as universal, that, where there is
a choice to be made, a Mason will give his vote and influence, in
politics and business, to the less qualified profane in preference to
the better qualified Mason. One will take an oath to oppose any
unlawful usurpation of power, and then become the ready and even
eager instrument of a usurper. Another will call one "Brother,"
and then play toward him the part of Judas Iscariot, or strike
him, as Joab did Abner, under the fifth rib, with a lie whose au-
thorship is not to be traced. Masonry does not change human
nature, and cannot make honest men out of born knaves.

While you are still engaged in preparation, and in accumulating
principles for future use, do not forget the words of the Apostle
James : "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is
like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass, for he be-
holdeth himself, and goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what
manner of man he was ; but whoso looketh into the perfect law of
liberty, and continueth, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer
of the work, this man shall be blessed in his work. If any man
among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but
deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. . . . Faith, if
it hath not works, is dead, being an abstraction. A man is justi-
fied by works, and not by faith only. . . . The devils believe, — and
tremble. ... As the body without the heart is dead, so is faith

without works."

*****

In political science, also, free governments are erected and free
constitutions framed, upon some simple and intelligible theory.
Upon whatever theory they are based, no sound conclusion is to
be reached except by carrying the theory out without flinching,
both in argument oh constitutional questions and in practice.
Shrink from the true theory through timidity, or wander from it
through want of the logical faculty, or transgress against it
through passion or on the plea of necessity or expediency, and you
have denial or invasion of rights, laws that offend against first
principles, usurpation of illegal powers, or abnegation and abdica-
tion of legitimate authority.

FELLOW-CRAFT. 37

Do not forget, either, that as the showy, superficial, impudent
and self-conceited will almost always be preferred, even in utmost
stress of danger and calamity of the State, to the man of solid
learning, large intellect, and catholic sympathies, because he is
nearer the common popular and legislative level, so the highest
truth is not acceptable to the mass of mankind.

When SOLON was asked if he had given his countrymen the best
laws, he answered, "The best they are capable of receiving." This
is one of the profoundest utterances on record; and yet like all
great truths, so simple as to be rarely comprehended. It contains
the whole philosophy of History. It utters a -truth which, had it
been recognized, would have saved men an immensity of vain, idle
disputes, and have led them into the clearer paths of knowledge in
the Past. It means this, — that all truths are Truths of Period,
and not truths for eternity; that whatever great fact has had
strength and vitality enough to make itself real, whether of re-
ligion, morals, government, or of whatever else, and to find place
in this world, has been a truth for the time, and as good as men
were capable of receiving.

So, too, with great men. The intellect and capacity of a people
has a single measure, — that of the great men whom Providence
gives it, and whom it receives. There have always been men too
great for their time or their people. Every people makes such men
only its idols, as it is capable of comprehending.

To impose ideal truth or law upon an incapable and merely real
man, must ever be a vain and empty speculation. The laws of
sympathy govern in this as they do in regard to men who are put
at the head. We do not know, as yet, what qualifications the sheep
insist on in a leader. With men who are too high intellectually,
the mass have as little sympathy as they have ,with the stars. When
BURKE, the wisest statesman England ever had, rose to speak, the
House of Commons was depopulated as upon an agreed signal.
There is as little sympathy between the mass and the highest
TRUTHS. The highest truth, being incomprehensible to the man of
realities, as the highest man is, and largely above his level, will be
a great unreality and falsehood to an unintellectual man. The pro-
foundest doctrines of Christianity and Philosophy would be mere
jargon and babble to a Potawatomie Indian. The popular expla-
nations of the symbols of Masonry are fitting for the multitude
that have swarmed into the Temples, — being fully up to the level

3 MORALS AND DOGMA.

of their capacity. Catholicism was a vital truth in its earliest ages,
but it became obsolete, and Protestantism arose, flourished, and
deteriorated. The doctrines of ZOROASTER were the best which
the ancient Persians were fitted to receive; those of CONFUCIUS
were fitted for the Chinese ; those of MOHAMMED for the idolatrous
Arabs of his age. Each was Truth for the time. Each was a
GOSPEL, preached by a REFORMER; and if any men are so little
fortunate as to remain content therewith, when others have at-
tained a higher truth, it is their misfortune and not their fault.
They are to be pitied for it, and not persecuted.

Do not expect easily to convince men of the truth, or to lead
them to think aright. The subtle human intellect can weave its
mists over even the clearest vision. Remember that it is eccentric
enough to ask unanimity from a jury; but to ask it from any
large number of men on any point of political faith is amazing.
You can hardly get two men in any Congress or Convention to
agree ; — nay, you can rarely get one to agree with himself. The
political church which chances to be, supreme anywhere has an
indefinite number of tongues. How then can we expect men to
agree as to matters beyond the cognizance of the senses? How
can we compass the Infinite and the Invisible with any chain of
evidence? Ask the small sea-waves what they murmur among
the pebbles ! How many of those words that come from the invis-
ible shore are lost, like the birds, in the long passage ? How vainly
do we strain the eyes across the long Infinite ! We must be con-
tent, as the children are, with the pebbles that have been stranded,
since it is forbidden us to explore the hidden depths.

The Fellow-Craft is especially taught by this not to become
wise in his own conceit. Pride in unsound theories is worse than
ignorance. Humility becomes a Mason. Take some quiet, sober
moment of life, and add together the two ideas of Pride and Man ;
behold him, creature of a span, stalking through infinite space in
all the grandeur of littleness ! Perched on a speck of the Universe,
every wind of Heaven strikes into his blood the coldness of death ;
his soul floats away from his body like the melody from the string.
Day and night, like dust on the wheel, he is rolled ajpng the heav-
ens, through a labyrinth of worlds, and all the creations of God are
flaming on every side, further than even his imagination can reach.
Is this a creature to make for himself a crown of glory, to deny his
own flesh, to mock at his fellow, sprung with him from that dust

FELLOW-CRAFT. 39

to which both will soon return? Does the proud man not err?
Does he not suffer? Does he not die? When he reasons, is he
never stopped short by difficulties ? When he acts, does he never
succumb to the temptations of pleasure ? When he lives, is he free
from pain ? Do the diseases not claim him as their prey ? When
he dies, can he escape the common grave? Pride is not the heri-
tage of man. Humility should dwell with frailty, and atone for
ignorance, error, and imperfection.

Neither should the Mason be over-anxious for office and honor,
however certainly he may feel that he has the capacity to serve the
State. He should neither seek nor spurn honors. It is good to
enjoy the blessings of fortune ; it is better to submit without a
pang to their loss. The greatest deeds are not done in the glare of
light, and before the eyes of the populace. He whom God has
gifted with a love of retirement possesses, as it were, an additional
sense ; and among the vast and noble scenes of nature, we find the
balm for the wounds we have received among the pitiful shifts of
policy; for the attachment to solitude is the surest preservative
from the ills of life.

But Resignation is the more noble in proportion as it is the less
passive. Retirement is only a morbid selfishness, if it prohibit
exertions for others ; as it is only dignified and noble, when it is
the shade whence the oracles issue that are to instruct mankind ;
and retirement of this nature is the sole seclusion which a good
and wise man will covet or commend. The very philosophy which
makes such a man covet the quiet, will make him eschew the inu-
tility of the hermitage. Very little praiseworthy would LORD
BOLINGBROKE have seemed among his haymakers and ploughmen,
if among haymakers and ploughmen he had looked with an indif-
ferent eye upon a profligate minister and a venal Parliament.
Very little interest would have attached to his beans and vetches,
if beans and vetches had caused him to forget that if he was hap-
pier on a farm he could be more useful in a Senate, and made him
forego, in the sphere of a bailiff, all care for re-entering that of a
legislator.

Remember, also, that there is an education which quickens the
Intellect, and leaves the heart hollower or harder than before.
There are ethical lessons in the laws of the heavenly bodies, in the
properties of earthly elements, in geography, chemistry, geology,
and all the material sciences. Things are symbols of Truths.

4<> MORALS AND DOGMA.

Properties are symbols of Truths. Science, not teaching moral
and spiritual truths, is dead and dry, of little more real value than
to commit to the memory a long row of unconnected dates, or of
the names of bugs or butterflies.

Christianity, it is said, begins from the burning of the false gods
by the people themselves. Education begins with the burning of
our intellectual and moral idols: our prejudices, notions, conceits,
our worthless or ignoble purposes. Especially it is necessary to
shake off the love of worldly gain. With Freedom comes the
longing for worldly advancement. In that race men are ever fall-
ing, rising, running, and falling again. The lust for wealth and
the abject dread of poverty delve the furrows on many a noble
brow. The gambler grows old as he watches the chances. Lawful
hazard drives Youth away before its time ; and this Youth draws
heavy bills of exchange on Age. Men live, like the engines, at
high pressure, a hundred years in a hundred months ; the ledger
becomes the Bible, and the day-book the Book of the Morning
Prayer.

Hence flow overreachings and sharp practice, heartless traffic in
which the capitalist buys profit with the lives of the laborers,
speculations that coin a nation's agonies into wealth, and all the
other devilish enginery of Mammon. This, and greed for office,
are the two columns at the entrance to the Temple of Moloch. It
is doubtful whether the latter, blossoming in falsehood, trickery,
and fraud, is not even more pernicious than the former. At all
events they are twins, and fitly mated ; and as either gains control
of the unfortunate subject, his soul withers away and decays, and
at last dies out. The souls of half the human race leave them
long before they die. The two greeds are twin plagues of the lep-
rosy, and make the man unclean ; and whenever they break out
they spread until "they cover all the skin of him that hath the
plague, from his head even to his foot." Even the raw flesh of the

heart becomes unclean with it.

* * * * * *

Alexander of Macedon has left a saying behind him which has
survived his conquests: "Nothing is nobler than. work." Work
only can keep even kings respectable. And when a king is a king
indeed, it is an honorable office to give tone to the manners and
morals of a nation ; to set the example of virtuous conduct, and
restore in spirit the old schools of chivalry, in which the young

FELLOW-CRAFT. 4!

manhood may be nurtured to real greatness. Work and wages
will go together in men's minds, in the most royal institutions.
We must ever come to the idea of real work. The rest that fol-
lows labor should be sweeter than the rest which follows rest.

Let no Fellow-Craft imagine that the work of the lowly and
uninfluential is not worth the doing. There is no legal limit to
the possible influences of a good deed or a wise word or a generous
effort. Nothing is really small. Whoever is open to the deep pen-
etration of nature knows this. Although, indeed, no absolute
satisfaction may be vouchsafed to philosophy, any more in circum-
scribing the cause than in limiting the effect, the man of. thought
and contemplation falls into unfathomable ecstacies in view of all
the decompositions of forces resulting in unity. All works for all.
Destruction is not annihilation, but regeneration.

Algebra applies to the clouds ; the radiance of the star benefits
the rose; no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the
hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calcu-
late the path of the molecule? How do we know that the crea-
tions of worlds are not determined by the fall of grains of sand?
Who, then, understands the reciprocal flow and ebb of the infi-
nitely great and the infinitely small ; the echoing of causes in the
abysses of beginning, and the avalanches of creation? A flesh-
worm is of account ; the small is great ; the great is small ; all is
in equilibrium in necessity. There are marvellous relations be-
tween beings and things; in this inexhaustible Whole, from sun
to grub, there is no scorn: all need each other. Light does not
carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing
what it does with them ; night distributes the stellar essence to the
sleeping plants. Every bird which flies has the thread of the
Infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor,
and the tap of a swallow's bill, breaking the egg ; and it leads for-
ward the birth of an earth-worm and the advent of a Socrates.
Where the telescope ends the microscope begins. Which of them
the grander view? A bit of mould is a Pleiad of flowers — a
nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

There is the same and a still more wonderful interpenetration
between the things of the intellect and the things of matter. Ele-
ments and principles are mingled, combined, espoused, multiplied
one by another, to such a degree as to bring the material world and
the moral world into the same light. Phenomena are perpetually

42 MORALS AND DOGMA.

folded back upon themselves. In the vast cosmical changes the
universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, enveloping
all in the invisible mystery of the emanations, losing no dream
from no single sleep, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star
there, oscillating, and winding in curves ; making a force of Light,
and an element of Thought; disseminated and indivisible, dis-
solving all save that point without length, breadth, or thickness,
The MYSELF; reducing everything to the Soul-atom; making
everything blossom into God; entangling all activities, from the
highest to the lowest, in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism;
hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth ;
subordinating, perhaps, if only by the identity of the law, the
eccentric evolutions of the comet in the firmament, to the whirl-
ings of the infusoria in the drop of water. A mechanism made of
mind, the first motor of which is the gnat, and its last wheel the
zodiac.

A peasant-boy, guiding Bliicher by the right one of two roads, the
other being impassable for artillery, enables him to reach Waterloo
in time to save Wellington from a defeat that would have been a
rout ; and so enables the kings to imprison Napoleon on a barren
rock in mid-ocean. An unfaithful smith, by the slovenly shoeing of
a horse, causes his lameness, and, he stumbling, the career of his
world-conquering rider ends, and the destinies of empires are
changed. A generous officer permits an imprisoned monarch to
end his game of chess before leading him to the block ; and mean-
while the usurper dies, and the prisoner reascends the throne.
An unskillful workman repairs the compass, or malice or stupidity
disarranges it, the ship mistakes her course, the waves swallow a
Caesar, and a new chapter is written in the history of a world.
What we call accident is but the adamantine chain of indissoluble
connection between all created things. The locust, hatched in the
Arabian sands, the small worm that destroys the cotton-boll, one
making famine in the Orient, the other closing the mills and starv-
ing the workmen and their children in the Occident, with riots and
massacres, are as much the ministers of God as the earthquake ;
and the fate of nations depends more on them than on the intel-
lect of its kings and legislators. A civil war in America will end
in shaking the world ; and that war may be caused by the vote of
some ignorant prize-fighter or crazed fanatic in a city or in a Con-
gress, or of some stupid boor in an obscure country parish. The

FELLOW-CRAFT. 43

electricity of universal sympathy, of action and reaction, pervades
everything, the planets and the motes in the sunbeam. FAUST,
with his types, or LUTHER, with his sermons, worked greater re-
sults than Alexander or Hannibal. A single thought sometimes
suffices to overturn a dynasty. A silly song did more to unseat
James the Second than the acquittal of the Bishops. Voltaire,
Condorcet, and Rousseau uttered words that will ring, in change
and revolutions, throughout all the ages.

Remember, that though life is short, Thought and the influences
of what we do or say, are immortal ; and that no calculus has yet
pretended to ascertain the law of proportion between cause and
effect. The hammer of an English blacksmith, smiting down an
insolent official, led to a rebellion which came near being a revo-
lution. The word well spoken, the deed fitly done, even by the
feeblest or humblest, cannot help but have their effect. More or
less, the effect is inevitable and eternal. The echoes of the great-
est deeds may die away like the echoes of a cry among the cliffs,
and what has been done seem to the human judgment to have
been without result. The unconsidered act of the poorest of
men may fire the train that leads to the subterranean mine, and
an empire be rent by the explosion.

The power of a free people is often at the disposal of a single
and seemingly an unimportant individual ; — a terrible and truth-
ful power ; for such a people feel with one heart, and therefore can
lift up their myriad arms for a single blow. And, again, there is
no graduated scale for the measurement of the influences of differ-
ent intellects upon the popular mind. Peter the Hermit held no

office, yet what a work he wrought !

* * * * * *

From the political point of view there is but a single principle, —
the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of one's
self over one's self is called LIBERTY. Where two or several of
these sovereignties associate, the State begins. But in this associa-
tion there is no abdication. Each sovereignty parts with a certain
portion of itself to form the common right. That portion is the
same for all. There is equal contribution by all to the joint sov-
ereignty. This identity of concession which each makes to all, is
EQUALITY. The common right is nothing more or less than the
protection of all, pouring its rays on each. This protection of
each by all, is FRATERNITY.

44 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Liberty is the summit, Equality the base. Equality is not all
vegetation on a level, a society of big spears of grass and stunted
oaks, a neighborhood of jealousies, emasculating each other. It is
civilly, all aptitudes having equal opportunity ; politically, all votes
having equal weight; religiously, all consciences having equal
rights.

Equality has an organ ; — gratuitous and obligatory instruction.
We must begin with the right to the alphabet. The primary
school obligatory upon all ; the higher school offered to all. Such
is the law. From the same school for all springs equal society.
Instruction ! Light ! all comes from Light, and all returns to it.

We must learn the thoughts of the common people, if we would
be wise and do any good work. We must look at men, not so much
for what Fortune has given to them with her blind old eyes, as for
the gifts Nature has brought in her lap, and for the use that has
been made of them. We profess to be equal in a Church and in
the Lodge: we shall be equal in the sight of God when He judges
the earth. We may well sit on the pavement together here, in com-
munion and conference, for the few brief moments that constitute
life.

A Democratic Government undoubtedly has its defects, because
it is made and administered by men, and not by the Wise Gods.
It cannot be concise and sharp, like the despotic. When its ire is
aroused it develops its latent strength, and the sturdiest rebel trem-
bles. But its habitual domestic rule is tolerant, patient, and inde-
cisive. Men are brought together, first to differ, and then to agree.
Affirmation, negation, discussion, solution: these are the means
of attaining truth. Often the enemy will be at the gates before
the babble of the disturbers is drowned in the chorus of consent.
In the Legislative office deliberation will often defeat decision.
Liberty can play the fool like the Tyrants.

Refined society requires greater minuteness of regulation ; and
the steps of all advancing States are more and more to be picked
among the old rubbish and the new materials. The difficulty lies
in discovering the right path through the chaos of confusion. The
adjustment of mutual rights and wrongs is also more difficult in
democracies. We do not see and estimate the relative importance
of objects so easily and clearly from the level or the Waving land
as from the elevation of a lone peak, towering above the plain ; for
each looks through his own mist.

FELLOW-CRAFT. 45

Abject dependence on constituents, also, is too common. It is
as miserable a thing as abject dependence on a minister or the
favorite of a Tyrant. It is rare to find a man who can speak out
the simple truth that is in him, honestly and frankly, without fear,
favor, or affection, either to Emperor or People.

Moreover, in assemblies of men, faith in each other is almost
always wanting, unless a terrible pressure of calamity or danger
from without produces cohesion. Hence the constructive power of
such assemblies is generally deficient. The chief triumphs of
modern days, in Europe, have been in pulling down and obliterat-
ing; not in building up. But Repeal is not Reform. Time must
bring with him the Restorer and Rebuilder.

Speech, also, is grossly abused in Republics; and if the use of
speech be glorious, its abuse is the most villainous of vices. Rhet-
oric, Plato says, is the art of ruling the minds of men. But in
democracies it is too common to hide thought in words, to overlay
it, to babble nonsense. The gleams and glitter of intellectual
soap-and-water bubbles are mistaken for the rainbow-glories of
genius. The worthless pyrites is continually mistaken for gold.
Even intellect condescends to intellectual jugglery, balancing
thoughts as a juggler balances pipes on his chin. In all Congresses
we have the inexhaustible flow of babble, and Faction's clamorous
knavery in discussion, until the divine power of speech, that priv-
ilege of man and great gift of God, is no better than the screech
of parrots or the mimicry of monkeys. The mere talker, however
fluent, is barren of deeds in the day of trial.

There are men voluble as women, and as well skilled in fencing
with the tongue : prodigies of speech, misers in deeds. Too much
talking, like too much thinking, destroys the power of action. In
human nature, the thought is only made perfect by deed. Silence
is the mother of both. The trumpeter is not the bravest of the
brave. Steel and not brass wins the day. The great doer of great
deeds is mostly slow and slovenly of speech. There are some men
born and bred to betray. Patriotism is their trade, and their cap-
ital is speech. But no noble spirit can plead like Paul and be false
to itself as Judas.

Imposture too commonly rules in republics; they seem to be
ever in their minority; their guardians are self-appointed; and
the unjust thrive better than the just. The Despot, like the
night-lion roaring, drowns all the clamor of tongues at once, and

46 MORALS AND DOGMA.

speech, the birthright of the free man, becomes the bauble of the
enslaved.

It is quite true that republics only occasionally, and as it were
accidentally, select their wisest, or even the less incapable among
the incapables, to govern them and legislate for them. If genius,
armed with learning and knowledge, will grasp the reins, the people
will reverence it ; if it only modestly offers itself for office, it will
be smitten on the face, even when, in the straits of distress and
the agonies of calamity, it is indispensable to the salvation of the
State. Put it upon the track with the showy and superficial, the
conceited, the ignorant, and impudent, the trickster and charlatan,
and the result shall not be a moment doubtful. The verdicts of
Legislatures and the People are like the verdicts of juries, — some-
times right by accident.

Offices, it is true, are showered, like the rains of Heaven, upon
the just and the unjust. The Roman Augurs that used to laugh
in each other's faces at the simplicity of the vulgar, were also
tickled with their own guile; but no Augur is needed to lead the
people astray. They readily deceive themselves. Let a Republic
begin as it may, it will not be out of its minority before imbecility
will be promoted to high places; and shallow pretence, getting
itself puffed into notice, will invade all the sanctuaries. The most
unscrupulous partisanship will prevail, even in respect to judicial
trusts ; and the most unjust appointments constantly be made,
although every improper promotion not merely confers one unde-
served favor, but may make a hundred honest cheeks smart with
injustice.

The country is stabbed in the front when those are brought into
the stalled seats who should slink into the dim gallery. Every
stamp of Honor, ill-clutched, is stolen from the Treasury of
Merit.

Yet the entrance into the public service, and the promotion in
it, affect both the rights of individuals and those of the nation.
Injustice in bestowing or withholding office ought to be so intoler-
able in democratic communities that the least trace of it should be
like the scent of Treason. It is not universally true that all citi-
zens of equal character have an equal claim to knock at the door
of every public office and demand admittance. When any man
presents himself for service he has a right to aspire to the highest
body at once, if he can show his fitness for such a beginning, — that

FELLOW-CRAFT. 47

he is fitter than the rest who offer themselves for the same post.
The entry into it can only justly be made through the door of
merit. And whenever any one aspires to and attains such high
post, especially if by unfair and disreputable and indecent means,
and is afterward found to be a signal failure, he should at once be
beheaded. He is the worst among the public enemies.

When a man sufficiently reveals himself, all others should be
proud to give him due precedence. When the power of promotion
is abused in the grand passages of life whether by People, Legis-
lature, or Executive, the unjust decision recoils on the judge at
once. That is not only a gross, but a willful shortness of sight, that
cannot discover the deserving. If one will look hard, long, and
honestly, he will not fail to discern merit, genius, and qualification ;
and the eyes and voice of the Press and Public should condemn
and denounce injustice wherever she rears her horrid head.

"The tools to the workmen!" no other principle will save a Re-
public from destruction, either by civil war or the dry-rot. They
tend to decay, do all we can to prevent it, like human bodies. If
they try the experiment of governing themselves by their smallest,
they slide downward to the unavoidable abyss with tenfold ve-
locity ; and there never has been a Republic that has not followed
that fatal course.

But however palpable and gross the inherent defects of demo-
cratic governments, and fatal as the results finally and inevitably
are, we need only glance at the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, and Ca-
ligula, of Heliogabalus and Caracalla,of Domitian and Commodus,
to recognize that the difference between freedom and despotism is
as wide as that between Heaven and Hell. The cruelty, baseness,
and insanity of tyrants are incredible. Let him who complains of
the fickle humors and inconstancy of a free people, read Pliny's
character of Domitian. If the great man in a Republic cannot
win office without descending to low arts and whining beggary and
the judicious use of sneaking lies, let him remain in retirement,
and use the pen. Tacitus and Juvenal held no office. Let His-
tory and Satire punish the pretender as they crucify the despot.
The revenges of the intellect are terrible and just.

Let Masonry use the pen and the printing-press in the free
State against the Demagogue; in the Despotism against the
Tyrant. History offers examples and encouragement. All history,
for four thousand years, being filled with violated rights and the

48 MORALS AND DOGMA.

sufferings of the people, each period of history brings with it such
protest as is possible to it. Under the Caesars there was no insur-
rection, but there was a Juvenal. The arousing of indigna-
tion replaces the Gracchi. Under the Caesars there is the exile of
Syene; there is also the author of the Annals. As the Neros
reign darkly they should be pictured so. Work with the graver
only would be pale ; into the grooves should be poured a concen-
trated prose that bites.

Despots are an aid to thinkers. Speech enchained is speech ter-
rible. The writer doubles and triples his style, when silence is
imposed by a master upon the people. There springs from this
silence a certain mysterious fullness, which filters and freezes into
brass in the thoughts. Compression in the history produces con-
ciseness in the historian. The granitic solidity of some celebrated
prose is only a condensation produced by the Tyrant. Tyranny
constrains the writer to shortenings of diameter which are in-
creases of strength. The Ciceronian period, hardly sufficient upon
Verres, would lose its edge upon Caligula.

The Demagogue is the predecessor of the Despot. One springs
from the other's loins. He who will basely fawn on those who
have office to bestow, will betray like Iscariot, and prove a miser-
able and pitiable failure. Let the new Junius lash such men as
they deserve, and History make them immortal in infamy; since
their influences culminate in ruin. The Republic that employs
and honors the shallow, the superficial, the base,

"who crouch
Unto the offal of an office promised,"

at last weeps tears of blood for its fatal error. Of such supreme
folly, the sure fruit is damnation. Let the nobility of every great
heart, condensed into justice and truth, strike such creatures like
a thunderbolt ! If you can do no more, you can at least condemn
by your vote, and ostracise by denunciation.

It is true that, as the Czars are absolute, they have it in their
power to select the best for the public service. It is true that the
beginner of a dynasty generally does so ; and that when monarch-
ies are in their prime, pretence and shallowness do not thrive and
prosper and get power, as they do in Republics. All do not gabble
in the Parliament of a Kingdom, as in the Congress of a Democ-
racy. The incapables do not go undetected there, all their lives.

FELLOW-CRAFT. 49

But dynasties speedily decay and run out. At last they dwindle
down into imbecility; and the dull or flippant Members of Con-
gresses are at least the intellectual peers of the vast majority of
kings. The great man, the Julius Caesar, the Charlemagne, Crom-
well, Napoleon, reigns of right. He is the wisest and the strong-
est. The incapables and imbeciles succeed and are usurpers ; and
fear makes them cruel. After Julius came Caracalla and Galba ;
after Charlemagne, the lunatic Charles the Sixth. So the Sara-
cenic dynasty dwindled out; the Capets, the Stuarts, the Bour-
bons ; the last of these producing Bomba, the ape of Domitian.
* *****

Man is by nature cruel, like the tigers. The barbarian, and the
tool of the tyrant, and the civilized fanatic, enjoy the sufferings of
others, as the children enjoy the contortions of maimed flies. Ab-
solute Power, once in fear for the safety of its tenure, cannot but
be cruel.

As to ability, dynasties invariably cease to possess any after a
few lives. They become mere shams, governed by ministers, favor-
ites, or courtesans, like those old Etruscan kings, slumbering for
long ages in their golden royal robes, dissolving forever at the first
breath of day. Let him who complains of the short-comings of
democracy ask himself if he would prefer a Du Barry or a Pompa-
dour, governing in the name of a Louis the Fifteenth, a Caligula
making his horse a consul, a Domitian, "that most savage mon-
ster," who sometimes drank the blood of relatives, sometimes em-
ploying himself with slaughtering the most distinguished citizens
before whose gates fear and terror kept watch ; a tyrant of fright-
ful aspect, pride on his forehead, fire in his eye, constantly seeking
darkness and secrecy, and only emerging from his solitude to make
solitude. After all, in a free government, the Laws and the Con-
stitution are above the Incapables, the Courts correct their legisla-
tion, and posterity is the Grand Inquest that passes judgment on
them. What is the exclusion of worth and intellect and knowl-
edge from civil office compared with trials before Jeffries, tortures
in the dark caverns of the Inquisition, Alva-butcheries in the
Netherlands, the Eve of Saint Bartholomew, and the Sicilian

Vespers ?

* *****

The Abbe Barruel in his Memoirs for the History of Jaco-
binism, declares that Masonry in France gave, as its secret, the

50 MORALS AND DOGMA.

vvords Equality and Liberty, leaving it for every honest and reli-
gious Mason to explain them as would best suit his principles ; but
retained the privilege of unveiling in the higher Degrees the mean-
ing of those words, as interpreted by the French Revolution. And
he also excepts English Masons from his anathemas, because in
England a Mason is a peaceable subject of the civil authorities,
no matter where he resides, engaging in no plots or conspiracies
igainst even the worst government. England, he says, disgusted
with an Equality and a Liberty, the consequences of which she
had felt in the struggles of her Lollards, Anabaptists, and Presby-
terians, had "purged her Masonry" from all explanations tending
to overturn empires ; but there still remained adepts whom disor-
ganizing principles bound to the Ancient Mysteries.

Because true Masonry, unemasculated, bore the banners of Free-
dom and Equal Rights, and was in rebellion against temporal and
spiritual tyranny, its Lodges were proscribed in 1735, by an edict
of the States of Holland. In 1737, Louis XV. forbade them in
France. In 1738, Pope Clement XII. issued against them his
famous Bull of Excommunication, which was renewed by Benedict
XIV. ; and in 1743 the Council of Berne also proscribed them.
The title of the Bull of Clement is, "The Condemnation of the
Society of Conventicles de Libert Muratori, or of the Freemasons,
under the penalty of ipso facto excommunication, the absolution
from which is reserved to the Pope alone, except at the point
of death." And by it all bishops, ordinaries, and inquisitors
were empowered to punish Freemasons, "as vehemently sus-
pected of heresy," and to call in, if necessary, the help of the
secular arm ; that is, to cause the civil authority to put them to

death.

* * * * * *

Also, false and slavish political theories end in brutalizing the
State. For example, adopt the theory that offices and employ-
ments in it are to be given as rewards for services rendered to
party, and they soon become the prey and spoil of faction, the
booty of the victory of faction ; — and leprosy is in the flesh of the
State. The body of the commonwealth becomes a mass of corrup-
tion, like a living carcass rotten with syphilis. All unsound theories
in the end develop themselves in one foul and loathsome disease
or other of the body politic. The State, like the man, must use
constant effort to stay in the paths of virtue and manliness. The

FELLOW-CRAFT. 51

habit of electioneering and begging for office culminates in bribery
with office, and corruption in office.

A chosen man has a visible trust from God, as plainly as if the
commission were engrossed by the notary. A nation cannot re-
nounce the executorship of the Divine decrees. As little can Ma-
sonry. It must labor to do its duty knowingly and wisely. We
must remember that, in free States, as well as in despotisms, Injus-
tice, the spouse of Oppression, is the fruitful parent of Deceit, Dis-
trust, Hatred, Conspiracy, Treason, and Unfaithfulness. Even in
assailing Tyranny we must have Truth and Reason as our chief
weapons. We must march into that fight like the old Puritans,
or into the battle with the abuses that spring up in free govern-
ment, with the flaming sword in, one hand, and the Oracles of God
in the other.

The citizen who cannot accomplish well the smaller purposes of
public life, cannot compass the larger. The vast power of endu-
rance, forbearance, patience, and performance, of a free people, is
acquired only by continual exercise of all the functions, like the
healthful physical human vigor. If the individual citizens have
it not, the State must equally be without it. It is of the essence
of a free government, that the people should not only be concerned
in making the laws, but also in their execution. No man ought to
be more ready to obey and administer the law than he who has
helped to make it. The business of government is carried on for
the benefit of all, and every co-partner should give counsel and co-
operation.

Remember also, as another shoal on which States are wrecked,
that free States always tend toward the depositing of the citizens
in strata, the creation of castes, the perpetuation of the jus divinum
to office in families. The more democratic the State, the more
sure this result. For, as free States advance in power, there is a
strong tendency toward centralization, not from deliberate evil
intention, but from the course of events and the indolence of hu-
man nature. The executive powers swell and enlarge to inordinate
dimensions ; and the Executive is always aggressive with respect
to the nation. Offices of all kinds are multiplied to reward parti-
sans ; the brute force of the sewerage and lower strata of the mob
obtains large representation, first in the lower offices, and at last
in Senates ; and Bureaucracy raises its bald head, bristling with
pens, girded with spectacles, and bunched with ribbon. The art

52 MORALS AND DOGMA.

of Government becomes like a Craft, and its guilds tend to become
exclusive, as those of the Middle Ages.

Political science may be much improved as a subject of specu-
lation ; but it should never be divorced from the actual national
necessity. The science of governing men must always be practi-
cal, rather than philosophical. There is not the same amount of
positive or universal truth here as in the abstract sciences; what
is true in one country may be very false in another ; what is untrue
to-day may become true in another generation, and the truth of
to-day be reversed by the judgment of to-morrow. To distinguish
the casual from the enduring, to separate the unsuitable from the
suitable, and to make progress even possible, are the proper ends
of policy. But without actual knowledge and experience, and
communion of labor, the dreams of the political doctors may be
no better than those of the doctors of divinity. The reign of such
a caste, with its mysteries, its myrmidons, and its corrupting influ-
ence, may be as fatal as that of the despots. Thirty tyrants are
thirty times worse than one.

Moreover, there is a strong temptation for the governing people
to become as much slothful and sluggards as the weakest of abso-
lute kings. Only give them the power to get rid, when caprice
prompts them, of the great and wise men, and elect the little, and
as to all the rest they will relapse into indolence and indifference.
The central power, creation of the people, organized and cunning
if not enlightened, is the perpetual tribunal set up by them for the
redress of wrong and the rule of justice. It soon supplies itself
with all the requisite machinery, and is ready and apt for all kinds
of interference. The people may be a child all its life. The cen-
tral power may not be able to suggest the best scientific solution
of a problem ; but it has the easiest means of carrying an idea
into effect. If the purpose to be attained is a large one, it requires
a large comprehension ; it is proper for the action of the central
power. If it be a small one, it may be thwarted by disagreement.
The central power must step in as an arbitrator and prevent this.
The people may be too averse to change, too slothful in their own
business, unjust to a minority or a majority. The central power
must take the reins when the people drop them.

France became centralized in its government more by the apa-
thy and ignorance of its people than by the tyranny of its kings.
When the inmost parish-life is given up to the direct guardian-

FELLOW-CRAFT. 53

ship of the State, and the repair of the belfry of a country church
requires a written order from the central power, a people is in its
dotage. Men are thus nurtured in imbecility, from the dawn of
social life. When the central government feeds part of the people
it prepares all to be slaves. When it directs parish and county
affairs, they are slaves already. The next step is to regulate labor
and its wages.

Nevertheless, whatever follies the free people may commit, even
to the putting of the powers of legislation in the hands of the
little competent and less honest, despair not of the final result.
The terrible teacher, EXPERIENCE, writing his lessons on hearts
desolated with calamity and wrung by agony, will make them wiser
in time. Pretence and grimace and sordid beggary for votes will
some day cease to avail. Have FAITH, and struggle on, against all
evil influences and discouragements ! FAITH is the Saviour and
Redeemer of nations. When Christianity had grown weak, profit-
less, and powerless, the Arab Restorer and Iconoclast came, like a
cleansing hurricane. When the battle of Damascus was about to
be fought, the Christian bishop, at the early dawn, in his robes, at
the head of his clergy, with the Cross once so triumphant raised
in the air, came down to the gates of the city, and laid open be-
fore the army the Testament of Christ. The Christian general,
THOMAS, laid his hand on the book, and said, "Oh God! IF our
faith be true, aid us, and deliver us not into the hands of its ene-
mies!" But KHALED, "the Sword of God," who had marched
from victory to victory, exclaimed to his wearied soldiers, "Let no
man sleep! There will be rest enough in the bowers of Paradise;
sweet will be the repose never more to be folloived by labor." The
faith of the Arab had become stronger than that of the Christian,
and he conquered.

The Sword is also, in the Bible, an emblem of SPEECH, or of the
utterance of thought. Thus, in that vision or apocalypse of the
sublime exile of Patmos, a protest in the name of the ideal, over-
whelming the real world, a tremendous satire uttered in the name
of Religion and Liberty, and with its fiery reverberations smiting
the throne of the Caesars, a sharp two-edged sword comes out of
the mouth of the Semblance of the Son of Man, encircled by the
seven golden candlesticks, and holding in his right hand seven
stars. "The Lord," says Isaiah, "hath made my mouth like a
sharp sword." "I have slain them/" says Hosea, "by the words

54 MORALS AND DOGMA.

of my mouth." "The word of God," says the writer of the apos-
tolic letter to the Hebrews, "is quick and powerful, and sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder
of soul and spirit." "The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word
of God," says Paul, writing to the Christians at Ephesus. "I will
fight against them with the sword of my mouth," it is said in the

Apocalypse, to the angel of the church at Pergamos.

******

The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal
wave ; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is
heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an
echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is nothing
to the living and coming generations of men. It was the written
human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought.
It is this that makes the whole human history but one individual
life.

To write on the rock is to write on a solid parchment; but it
requires a pilgrimage to see it. There is but one copy, and Time
wears eve"n that. To write on skins or papyrus was to give, as it
were, but one tardy edition, and the rich only could procure it.
The Chinese stereotyped not only the unchanging wisdom of old
sages, but also the passing events. The process tended to suffocate
thought, and to hinder progress; for there is continual wandering
in the wisest minds, and Truth writes her last words, not on clean
tablets, but on the scrawl that Error has made and often mended.

Printing made the movable letters prolific. Thenceforth the
orator spoke almost visibly to listening nations; and the author
wrote, like the Pope, his oecumenic decrees, urbi et orbi, and or-
dered them to be posted up in all the market-places ; remaining,
if he chose, impervious to human sight. The doom of tyrannies
was thenceforth sealed. Satire and invective became potent as
armies. The unseen hands of the Juniuses could launch the thun-
derbolts, and make the ministers tremble. One whisper from this
giant fills the earth as easily as Demosthenes filled the Agora. It
will soon be heard at the antipodes as easily as in the next street.
It travels with the lightning under the oceans. It makes the
mass one man, speaks to it in the same common language, and
elicits a sure and single response. Speech passes into thought, and
thence promptly into act. A nation becomes truly one, with one
large heart and a single throbbing pulse. Men are invisibly pres-

FELLOW-CRAFT. 55

ent to each other, as if already spiritual beings ; and the thinker
who sits in an Alpine solitude, unknown to or forgotten by all the
world, among the silent herds and hills, may flash his words to all
the cities and over all the seas.

Select the thinkers to be Legislators ; and avoid the gabblers.
Wisdom is rarely loquacious. Weight and depth of thought are
unfavorable to volubility. The shallow and superficial are gen-
erally voluble and often pass for eloquent. More words, less
thought, — is the general rule. The man who endeavors to say
something worth remembering in every sentence, becomes fastidi-
ous, and condenses like Tacitus. The vulgar love a more diffuse
stream. The ornamentation that does not cover strength is the
gewgaws of babble.

Neither is dialectic subtlety valuable to public men. The Chris-
tian faith has it, had it formerly more than now ; a subtlety that
might have entangled Plato, and which has rivalled in a fruitless
fashion the mystic lore of Jewish Rabbis and Indian Sages. It is
not this which converts the heathen. It is a vain task to balance
the great thoughts of the earth, like hollow straws, on the finger-
tips of disputation. It is not this kind of warfare which makes
the Cross triumphant in the hearts of the unbelievers; but the
actual power that lives in the Faith.

So there is a political scholasticism that is merely useless. The
dexterities of subtle logic rarely stir the hearts of the people, or
convince them. The true apostle of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equal-
ity makes it a matter of life and death. His combats are like
those of Bossuet, — combats to the death. The true apostolic fire
is like the lightning : it flashes conviction into the soul. The true
word is verily a two-edged sword. Matters of government and
political science can be fairly dealt with only by sound reason, and
the logic of common sense : not the common sense of the igno-
rant, but of the wise. The acutest thinkers rarely succeed in be-
coming leaders of men. A watchword or a catchword is more
potent with the people than logic, especially if this be the least
metaphysical. When a political prophet arises, to stir the dream-
ing, stagnant nation, and hold back its feet from the irretrievable
descent, to heave the land as with an earthquake, and shake the
silly-shallow idols from their seats, his words will come straight
from God's own mouth, and be thundered into the conscience. He
will reason, teach, warn, and rule. The real "Sword of the Spirit"

56 MORALS AND DOGMA.

is keener than the brightest blade of Damascus. Such men rule
a land, in the strength of justice, with wisdom and with power.
Still, the men of dialectic subtlety often rule well, because in prac-
tice they forget their finely-spun theories, and use the trenchant
logic of common sense. But when the great heart and large intel-
lect are left to the rust in private life, and small attorneys, brawlers
in politics, and those who in the cities would be only the clerks of
notaries, or practitioners in the disreputable courts, are made na-
tional Legislators, the country is in her dotage, even if the beard
has not yet grown upon her chin.

In a free country, human speech must needs be free ; and the
State must listen to the maunderings of folly, and the screechings
of its geese, and the brayings of its asses, as well as to the golden
oracles of its wise and great men. Even the despotic old kings
allowed their wise fools to say what they liked. The true alchem-
ist will extract the lessons of wisdom from the babblings of folly.
He will hear what a man has to say on any given subject, even if
the speaker end only in proving himself prince of fools. Even a
fool will sometimes hit the mark. There is some truth in all men
who are not compelled to suppress their souls and speak other
men's thoughts. The finger even of the idiot may point to the
great highway.

A people, as well as the sages, must learn to forget. If it neither
learns the new nor forgets the old, it is fated, even if it has been
royal for thirty generations. To unlearn is to learn ; and also it is
sometimes needful to learn again the forgotten. The antics of
fools make the current follies more palpable, as fashions are shown
to be absurd by caricatures, which so lead to their extirpation. The
buffoon and the zany are useful in their places. The ingenious
artificer and craftsman, like Solomon, searches the earth for his
materials, and transforms the misshapen matter into glorious
workmanship. The world is conquered by the head even more
than by the hands. Nor will any assembly talk forever. After a
time, when it has listened long enough, it quietly puts the silly,
the shallow, and the superficial to one side, — it thinks, and sets to
work.

The human thought, especially in popular assemblies, runs in
the most singularly crooked channels, harder to trace and follow
than the blind currents of the ocean. No notion is so absurd that
it may not find a place there. The master-workman must train

FELLOW-CRAFT. 57

these notions and vagaries with his two-handed hammer. They
twist out of the way of the sword-thrusts; and are invulnerable
all over, even in the heel, against logic. The martel or mace, the
battle-axe, the great double-edged two-handed sword must deal
with follies; the rapier is no better against them than a wand,
unless it be the rapier of ridicule.

The SWORD is also the symbol of war and of the soldier. Wars,
like thunder-storms, are often necessary, to purify the stagnant
atmosphere. War is not a demon, without remorse or reward. It
restores the brotherhood in letters of fire. When men are seated
in their pleasant places, sunken in ease and indolence, with Pre-
tence and Incapacity and littleness usurping all the high places
of State, war is the baptism of blood and fire, by which alone
they can be renovated. It is the hurricane that brings the ele-
mental equilibrium, the concord of Power and Wisdom. So
long as these continue obstinately divorced, it will continue to
chasten.

In the mutual appeal of nations to God, there is the acknowl-
edgment of His might. It lights the beacons of Faith and Free-
dom, and heats the furnace through which the earnest and loyal
pass to immortal glory. There is in war the doom of defeat, the
quenchless sense of Duty, the stirring sense of Honor, the meas-
ureless solemn sacrifice of devotedness, and the incense of success.
Even in the flame and smoke of battle, the Mason discovers his
brother, and fulfills the sacred obligations of Fraternity.

Two, or the Duad, is the symbol of Antagonism ; of Good and
Evil, Light and Darkness. It is Cain and Abel, Eve and Lilith,
Jachin and Boaz, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon.

THREE, or the Triad, is most significantly expressed by the equi-
lateral and the right-angled triangles. There are three principal
colors or rays in the rainbow, which by intermixture make seven.
The three are the green, the yellow, and the red. The Trinity of
the Deity, in one mode or other, has been an article in all creeds.
He creates, preserves, and destroys. He is the generative power,
the productive capacity, and the result. The immaterial man, ac-
cording to the Kabalah, is composed of vitality, or life, the breath
of life ; of soul or mind, and spirit. Salt, sulphur, and mercury
are the great symbols of the alchemists. To them man was body,
soul, and spirit.

FOUR is expressed by the square, or four-sided right-angled

58 MORALS AND DOGMA.

tigure. Out of the symbolic Garden of Eden flowed a river, divid-
ing into four streams, — PISON, which flows around the land of
gold, or light ; GIHON, which flows around the land of Ethiopia
or Darkness; HIDDEKEL, running eastward to Assyria; and the
EUPHRATES. Zechariah saw four chariots coming out from be-
tween two mountains of bronze, in the first of which were red
horses ; in the second, black; in the third, white; and in the
fourth, grizzled: "and these were the four winds of the heavens,
that go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth."
Ezekiel saw the four living creatures, each with four faces and
four wings, the faces of a man and a lion, an ox and an eagle;
and the four wheels going upon their four sides ; and Saint John
beheld the four beasts, full of eyes before and behind, the LION,
the young Ox, the MAN, and the flying EAGLE. Four was the
signature of the Earth. Therefore, in the I48th Psalm, of those
who must praise the Lord on the land, there are four times four,
and four in particular of living creatures. Visible nature is de-
scribed as the four quarters of the world, and the four corners of
the earth. "There are four," says the old Jewish saying, "which
take the first place in this world ; man, among the creatures ;
the eagle among birds; the ox among cattle; and the lion
among wild beasts." Daniel saw four great beasts come up from
the sea.

FIVE is the Duad added to the Triad. It is expressed by the
five-pointed or blazing star, the mysterious Pentalpha of Pythago-
ras. It is indissolubly connected with the number seven. Christ
fed His disciples and the multitude with five loaves and tzt'o fishes,
and of the fragments there remained twelve, that is, five and seven,
baskets full. Again He fed them with seven loaves and a few little
fishes, and there remained seven baskets full. The five apparently
small planets. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with
the two greater ones, the Sun and Moon, constituted the seven
celestial spheres.

SEVEN was the peculiarly sacred number. There were seven
planets and spheres presided over by seven archangels. There were
seven colors in the rainbow ; and the Phoenician Deity was called
the HEPTAKIS or God of seven rays ; seven days of the week ;
and seven and five made the number of months, tribes, and apos-
tles. Zechariah saw a golden candlestick, with seven lamps and
seven pipes to the lamps, and an olive-tree on each side. "Since

FELLOW-CRAFT. 59

he says, "the seven eyes of the Lord shall rejoice, and shall see the
plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel." John, in the Apocalypse,
writes seven epistles to the seven churches. In the seven epistles
there are twelve promises. What is said of the churches in praise
or blame, is completed in the number three. The refrain, "who
has ears to hear," etc., has ten words, divided by three and seven,
and the seven by three and four; and the seven epistles are also so
divided. In the seals, trumpets, and vials, also, of this symbolic
vision, the seven are divided by four and three. He who sends his
message to Ephesus, "holds the seven stars in his right hand, and
walks amid the seven golden lamps."

In six days, or periods, God created the Universe, and paused on
the seventh day. Of clean beasts, Noah was directed to take by
sevens into the ark ; and of fowls by sevens; because in seven days
the rain was to commence. On the seventeenth day of the month,
the rain began ; on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the
ark rested on Ararat. When the dove returned, Noah waited
seven days before he sent her forth again ; and again seven, after
she returned with the olive-leaf. Enoch was the seventh patriarch,
Adam included, and Lamech lived 777 years.

There were scv-en lamps in the great candlestick of the Taberna-
cle and Temple, representing the seven planets. Seven times Moses
sprinkled the anointing oil upon the altar. The days of consecra-
tion of Aaron and his sons were seven in number. A woman was
unclean seven days after child-birth ; one infected with leprosy
was shut up seven days ; seven times the leper was sprinkled with
the blood of a slain bird ; and seven days afterwards he must re-
main abroad out of his tent. Seven times, in purifying the leper,
the priest was to sprinkle the consecrated oil ; and seven times to
sprinkle with the blood of the sacrificed bird the house to be puri-
fied. Seven times the blood of the slain bullock was sprinkled on
the mercy-seat; and seven times on the altar. The seventh year
was a Sabbath of rest ; and at the end of seven times seven years
came the great year of jubilee. Seven days the people ate unleav-
ened bread, in the month of Abib. Seven weeks were counted
from the time of first putting the sickle to the wheat. The Feast
of the Tabernacles lasted seven days.

Israel was in the land of Midian seven years, before Gideon de-
livered them. The bullock sacrificed by him was seven years old.
Samson told Delilah to bind him with seven green withes; and

60 MORALS AND DOGMA.

she wove the seven locks of his head, and afterwards shaved them
off. Balaam told Barak to build for him seven altars. Jacob
served seven years for Leah and seven for Rachel. Job had seven
sons and three daughters, making the perfect number ten. He
had also seven thousand sheep and three thousand camels. His
friends sat clown with him seven days and seven nights. His friends
were ordered to sacrifice seven bullocks and seven rams ; and again,
at the end, he had seven sons and three daughters, and twice seven
thousand sheep, and lived an hundred and forty, or twice seven
times ten years. Pharaoh saw in his dream seven fat and seven
lean kine, seven good ears and seven blasted ears of wheat; and
there were seven years of plenty, and seven of famine. Jericho
fell, when seven priests, with seven trumpets, made the circuit of
the city on seven successive days ; once each day for six days, and
seven times on the seventh. "The seven eyes of the Lord," says
Zechariah, "run to and fro through the whole earth." Solomon was
seven years in building the Temple. Seven angels, in the Apoca-
lypse, pour out seven plagues, from seven vials of wrath. The
scarlet-colored beast, on which the woman sits in the wilderness,
has seven heads and ten horns. So also has the beast that rises
up out of the sea. Seven thunders uttered their voices. Seven
angels sounded seven trumpets. Seven lamps of fire, the seven
spirits of God, burned before the throne ; and the Lamb that was
slain had seven horns and seven eyes.

EIGHT is the first cube, that of two. NINE is the square of
three, and represented by the triple triangle.

TEN includes all the other numbers. It is especially seven and
three; and is called the number of perfection. Pythagoras rep-
resented it by the TETRACTYS, which had many mystic meanings.
This symbol is sometimes composed of dots or points, sometimes
of commas or yods, and in the Kabalah, of the letters of the name
of Deity. It is thus arranged :

9

9 9

999
9999

FELLOW-CRAFT. 6l

The Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, inclusive, are ten in num-
ber, and the same number is that of the Commandments.

TWELVE is the number of the lines of equal length that form a
cube. It is the number of the months, the tribes, and the apos-
tles; of the oxen under the Brazen Sea, of the stones on the
breast-plate of the high priest.

III.

THE MASTER.

******

To understand literally the symbols and allegories of Oriental
books as to ante-historical matters, is willfully to close our eyes
against the Light. To translate the symbols into the trivial and
commonplace, is the blundering of mediocrity.

All religious expression is symbolism ; since we can describe only
what we see, and the true objects of religion are THE SEEN. The
earliest instruments of education were symbols ; and they and all
other religious forms differed and still differ according to external
circumstances and imagery, and according to differences of knowl-
edge and mental cultivation. All language is symbolic, so far as
it is applied to mental and spiritual phenomena and action. All
words have, primarily, a material sense, however they may after-
ward get, for the ignorant, a spiritual wow-sense. "To retract,"
for example, is to draiv back, and when applied to a statement, is
symbolic, as much so as a picture of an arm drawn back, to express
the same thing, would be. The very word "spirit" means "breath"
from the Latin verb spiro, breathe.

To present a visible symbol to the eye of another, is not neces-
sarily to inform him of the meaning which that symbol has to you.
Hence the philosopher soon superadded to the symbols explana-
tions addressed to the ear, susceptible of more precision, but less
effective and impressive than the painted or sculptured forms
which he endeavored to explain. Out of these explanations grew
by degrees a variety of narrations, whose true object and meaning
were gradually forgotten, or lost in contradictions and incongrui-
ties. And when these were abandoned, and Philosophy resorted
to definitions and formulas, its language was but a more compli-
cated symbolism, attempting in the dark to grapple with and pic-
ture ideas impossible to be expressed. For as with the visible
symbol, so with the word : to utter it to you does not inform you
of the exact meaning which it has to me; and thus* -religion and
philosophy became to a great extent disputes as to the meaning
62 •

THE MASTER. ^3

of words. The most abstract expression for DEITY, which language
can supply, is but a sign or symbol for an object beyond our com-
prehension, and not more truthful and adequate than the images
of OSIRIS and VISHNU, or their names, except as being less sensu-
ous and explicit. We avoid sensuousness, only by resorting to
simple negation. We come at last to define spirit by saying that
it is not matter. Spirit is — spirit.

A single example of the symbolism of words will indicate to you
one branch of Masonic study. We find in the English Rite this
phrase : "I will always hail, ever conceal, and never reveal ;" and
in the Catechism, these :

Q.\ "I hail."

A.'. "I conceal;"

and ignorance, misunderstanding the word "hail," has interpolated
the phrase, "From whence do you hail?"

But the word is really "hele," from the Anglo-Saxon verb pelan,
helan, to cover, hide, or conceal. And this word is rendered by the
Latin verb tegere, to cover or roof over. "That ye fro me no
thynge woll hele," says Gower. "They hele fro me no priuyte,"
says the Romaunt of the Rose. "To heal a house," is a common
phrase in Sussex; and in the west of England, he that covers a
house with slates is called a Healer. Wherefore, to "heal" means
the same thing as to "tile," — itself symbolic, as meaning, prima-
rily, to cover a house with tiles, — and means to cover, hide, or con-
ceal. Thus language too is symbolism, and words are as much
misunderstood and misused as more material symbols are.

Symbolism tended continually to become more complicated ; and
all the powers of Heaven were reproduced on earth, until a web of
fiction and allegory was woven, partly by art and partly by the ig-
norance of error, which the wit of man, with his limited means of
explanation, will never unravel. Even the Hebrew Theism be-
came involved in symbolism and image-worship, borrowed prob-
ably from an older creed and remote regions of Asia, — the wor-
ship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its symboli-
cal representations of JEHOVAH Himself were not even confined
to poetical or illustrative language. The priests were monothe-
ists : the people idolaters.

There are dangers inseparable from symbolism, which afford PM
impressive lesson in regard to the similar risks attendant 0:1 the
use of language. The imagination, called in to assist the reason,

64 MORALS AND DOGMA.

usurps its place or leaves its ally helplessly entangled in its web.
Names which stand for things are confounded with them; the
means are mistaken for the end ; the instrument of interpretation
for the object ; and thus symbols come to usurp an independent
character as truths and persons. Though perhaps a necessary
path, they were a dangerous one by which to approach the Deity ;
in which many, says PLUTARCH, "mistaking the sign for the thing
signified, fell into a ridiculous superstition ; while others, in avoid-
ing one extreme, plunged into the no less hideous gulf of irreligion
and impiety."

It is through the Mysteries, CICERO says, that we have learned
the first principles of life ; wherefore the term "initiation" is used
with good reason ; and they not only teach us to live more happily
and agreeably, but they soften the pains of death by the hope of a
better life hereafter.

The Mysteries were a Sacred Drama, exhibiting some legend
significant of nature's changes, of the visible Universe in which the
Divinity is revealed, and whose import was in many respects as
open to the Pagan as to the Christian. Nature is the great Teacher
of man ; for it is the Revelation of God. It neither dogmatizes nor
attempts to tyrannize by compelling to a particular creed or spec-
ial interpretation. It presents its symbols to us, and adds nothing
by way of explanation. It is the text without the commentary;
and, as we well know, it is chiefly the commentary and gloss that
lead to error and heresy and persecution. The earliest instructors
of mankind not only adopted the lessons of Nature, but as far as
possible adhered to her method of imparting them. In the Myste-
ries, beyond the current traditions or sacred and enigmatic recitals
of the Temples, few explanations were given to the spectators,
who were left, as in the school of nature, to make inferences for
themselves. No other method could have suited every degree of
cultivation and capacity. To employ nature's universal symbolism
instead of the technicalities of language, rewards the humblest in-
quirer, and discloses its secrets to every one in proportion to his
preparatory training and his power to comprehend them. If their
philosophical meaning was above the comprehension of some, their
moral and political meanings are within the reach of all.

These mystic shows and performances were not the reading of
a lecture, but the opening of a problem. Requiring research, they
were calculated to arouse the dormant intellect. They implied no

THE MASTER. 65

hostility to Philosophy, because Philosophy is the great expounder
of symbolism ; although its ancient interpretations were often ill-
founded and incorrect. The alteration from symbol to dogma is
fatal to beauty of expression, and leads to intolerance and assured

infallibility.

******

If, in teaching the great doctrine of the divine nature of the
Soul, and in striving to explain its longings after immortality, and
in proving its superiority over the souls of the animals, which hav.e
no aspirations Heavenward, the ancients struggled in vain to
express the nature of the soul, by comparing it to FIRE and LIGHT,,
it will be well for us to consider whether, with all our boasted
knowledge, we have any better or clearer idea of its nature, and
whether we have not despairingly taken refuge in having none at
all. And if they erred as to its original place of abode, and under-
stood literally the mode and path of its descent, these were but the
accessories of the great Truth, and probably, to the Initiates, mere
allegories, designed to make the idea more palpable and impressive
to the mind.

They are at least no more fit to be smiled at by the self-conceit
of a vain ignorance, the wealth of whose knowledge consists solely
in words, than the bosom of Abraham, as a home for the spirits of
the just dead ; the gulf of actual fire, for the eternal torture of
spirits; and the City of the New Jerusalem, with its walls of
jasper and its edifices of pure gold like clear glass, its foundations
of precious stones, and its gates each of a single pearl. "I knew
a man," says PAUL, "caught up to the third Heaven ; . . . . that he
was caught up into Paradise, and heard ineffable words, which it
is not possible for a man to utter." And nowhere is the antagon-
ism and conflict between the spirit and body more frequently and
forcibly insisted on than in the writings of this apostle, nowhere
the Divine nature of the soul more strongly asserted. "With the
mind," he says, "I serve the law of God; but with the flesh the
law of sin .... As many as are led by the Spirit of God, are the
sons of God .... The earnest expectation of the created waits
for the manifestation of the sons of God. .. . The created shall
be delivered from the bondage of corruption, of the flesh liable to

decay, into the glorious liberty of the children of God."
******

Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of

66 MORALS AND DOGMA.

falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacher-
ous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash.
Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity
and office, and because of the greed for wealth. Experience will
probably prove that these odious and detestable vices will grow
most rankly and spread most rapidly in a Republic. When office
and wealth become the gods of a people, and the most unworthy
and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the high-
way to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies
and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern in-
tegrity and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only
rarely and by accident. To be able to serve the country well, will
cease to be a reason why the great and wise and learned should be
selected to render service. Other qualifications, less honorable,
will be more available. To adapt one's opinions to the popular
humor; to defend, apologize for, and justify the popular follies; to
advocate the expedient and the plausible ; to caress, cajole, and flat-
ter the elector ; to beg like a spaniel for his vote, even if he be a
negro three removes from barbarism ; to profess friendship for a
competitor and stab him by innuendo ; to set on foot that which at
third hand shall become a lie, being cousin-german to it when ut-
tered, and yet capable of being explained away, — who is there that
has not seen these low arts and base appliances put into practice,
and becoming general, until success cannot be surely had by any
more honorable means ? — the result being a State ruled and ruined
by ignorant and shallow mediocrity, pert self-conceit, the green-
ness of unripe intellect, vain of a school-boy's smattering of know-
ledge.

The faithless and the false in public and in political life, will be
faithless and false in private. The jockey in politics, like the
jockey on the race-course, is rotten from skin to core. Every-
where he will see first to his own interests, and whoso leans on him
will be pierced with a broken reed. His ambition is ignoble, like
himself; and therefore he will seek to attain office by ignoble
means, as he will seek to attain any other coveted object, — land,
money, or reputation.

At length, office and honor are divorced. The. place that the
small and shallow, the knave or the trickster, is deemed competent
and fit to fill, ceases to be worthy 'the ambition of the great and
capable ; or if not, these shrink from a contest, the weapons to be
used wherein are unfit for a gentleman to handle. Then the habits

THE MASTER. 67

of unprincipled advocates in law courts are naturalized in Senates,
and pettifoggers wrangle there, when the fate of the nation and
the lives of millions are at stake. States are even begotten by vil-
lamv and brought forth by fraud, and rascalities are justified by
legislators claiming to be honorable. Then contested elections are
decided by perjured votes or party considerations; and all the
practices of the worst times of corruption are revived and exag-
gerated in Republics.

It is strange that reverence for truth, that manliness and gen-
uine loyalty, and scorn of littleness and unfair advantage, and
genuine faith and godliness and large-heartedness should diminish,
among statesmen and people, as civilization advances, and freedom
becomes more general, and universal suffrage implies universal
worth and fitness ! In the age of Elizabeth, without universal
suffrage, or Societies for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, or pop-
ular lecturers, or Lycaea, the statesman, the merchant, the burgher,
the sailor, were all alike heroic, fearing God only, and man not
at all. Let but a hundred or two years elapse, and in a Monarchy
or Republic of the same race, nothing is less heroic than the mer-
chant, the shrewd speculator, the office-seeker, fearing man only,
and God not at all. Reverence for greatness dies out, and is suc-
ceeded by base envy of greatness. Every man is in the way of
many, either in the path to popularity or wealth. There is a gen-
eral feeling of satisfaction when a great statesman is displaced, or
a general, who has been for his brief hour the popular idol, is un-
fortunate and sinks from his high estate. It becomes a misfor-
tune, if not a crime, to be above the popular level.

We should naturally suppose that a nation in distress would take
counsel with the wisest of its sons. But, on the contrary, great
men seem never so scarce as when they are most needed, and small
men never so bold to insist on infesting place, as when mediocrity
and incapable pretence and sophomoric greenness, and showy and
sprightly incompetency are most dangerous. When France was
in the extremity of revolutionary agony, she was governed by an
assembly of provincial pettifoggers, and Robespierre, Marat, and
Couthon ruled in the place of Mirabeau, Vergniaud, and Carnot.
England was governed by the Rump Parliament, after she had be-
headed her king. Cromwell extinguished one body, and Xapoleon
the other.

Fraud, falsehood, trickery, and deceit in national affairs, are the

68 MORALS AND DOGMA.

signs of decadence in States and precede convulsions or paralysis.
To bully the weak and crouch to the strong, is the policy of na-
tions governed by small mediocrity. The tricks of the canvass for
office are re-enacted in Senates. The Executive becomes the dis-
penser of patronage, chiefly to the most unworthy; and men are
bribed with offices instead of money, to the greater ruin of the
Commonwealth. The Divine in human nature disappears, and in-
terest, greed, and selfishness take its place. That is a sad and true
allegory which represents the companions of Ulysses changed by

the enchantments of Circe into swine.

******

"Ye cannot," said the Great Teacher, "serve God and Mam-
mon." When the thirst for wealth becomes general, it will be
sought for as well dishonestly as honestly ; by frauds and over-
reachings, by the knaveries of trade, the heartlessness of greedy
speculation, by gambling in stocks and commodities that soon de-
moralizes a whole community. Men will speculate upon the needs
of their neighbors and the distresses of their country. Bubbles
that, bursting, impoverish multitudes, will be blown up by cun-
ning knavery, with stupid credulity as its assistant and instru-
ment. Huge bankruptcies, that startle a country like the earth-
quakes, and are more fatal, fraudulent assignments, engulfment of
the savings of the poor, expansions and collapses of the currency,
the crash of banks, the depreciation of Government securities,
prey on the savings of self-denial, and trouble with their depreda-
tions the first nourishment of infancy and the last sands of life,
and fill with inmates the churchyards and lunatic asylums. But
the sharper and speculator thrives and fattens. If his country is
fighting by a levy en masse for her very existence, he aids her by
depreciating her paper, so that he may accumulate fabulous
amounts with little outlay. If his neighbor is distressed, he buys
his property for a song. If he administers upon an estate, it turns
out insolvent, and the orphans are paupers. If his bank explodes,
he is found to have taken care of himself in time. Society wor-
ships its paper-and-credit kings, as the old Hindus- and Egyptians
worshipped their worthless idols, and often the most obsequiously
when in actual solid wealth they are the veriest .paupers. No
wonder men think there ought to be another world, in which the
injustices of this may be atoned for, when they see the friends of
ruined families begging the wealthy sharpers to give alms to pre-

THE MASTER. 69

vent the orphaned victims from starving, until they may find

ways of supporting themselves.

£ * * * * *

States are chiefly avaricious of commerce and of territory. The
latter leads to the violation of treaties, encroachments upon feeble
neighbors, and rapacity toward their wards whose lands are cov-
eted. Republics are, in this, as rapacious and unprincipled as
Despots, never learning from history that inordinate expansion by
rapine and fraud has its inevitable consequences in dismember-
ment or subjugation. When a Republic begins to plunder its
neighbors, the words of doom are already written on its walls.
There is a judgment already pronounced of God, upon whatever is
unrighteous in the conduct of national affairs. When civil war
tears the vitals of a Republic, let it look back and see if it has not
been guilty of injustices; and if it has, let it humble itself in the
dust !

When a nation becomes possessed with a spirit of commercial
greed, beyond those just and fair limits set by a due regard to a
moderate and reasonable degree of general and individual prosper-
ity, it is a nation possessed by the devil of commercial avarice, a
passion as ignoble and demoralizing as avarice in the individual ;
and as this sordid passion is baser and more unscrupulous than
ambition, so it is more hateful, and at last makes the infected na-
tion to be regarded as the enemy of the human race. To grasp at
the lion's share of commerce, has always at last proven the ruin of
States, because it invariably leads to injustices that make a State
detestable; to a selfishness and crooked policy that forbid other
nations to be the friends of a State that cares only for itself.

Commercial avarice in India was the parent of more atrocities
and greater rapacity, and cost more human lives, than the nobler
ambition for extended empire of Consular Rome. The nation
that grasps at the commerce of the world cannot but become
selfish, calculating, dead to the noblest impulses and sympathies
which ought to actuate States. It will submit to insults that
wound its honor, rather than endanger its commercial interests by
war; while, to subserve those interests, it will wage unjust war,
on false or frivolous pretexts, its free people cheerfully allying
themselves with despots to crush a commercial rival that has
dared to exile its kings and elect its own ruler.

Thus the cold calculations of a sordid self-interest, in nations

/O MORALS AND DOGMA.

commercially avaricious, always at last displace the sentiments and
lofty impulses of Honor and Generosity by which they rose to
greatness; which made Elizabeth and Cromwell alike the pro-
tectors of Protestants beyond the four seas of England, against
crowned Tyranny and mitred Persecution ; and, if they had
lasted, would have forbidden alliances with Czars and Autocrats
and Bourbons to re-enthrone the Tyrannies of Incapacity, and
arm the Inquisition anew with its instruments of torture. The
soul of the avaricious nation petrifies, like the soul of the individ-
ual who makes gold his god. The Despot will occasionally act
upon noble and generous impulses, and help the weak against the
strong, the right against the wrong. But commercial avarice is
essentially egotistic, grasping, faithless, overreaching, crafty, cold,
ungenerous, selfish, and calculating, controlled by considerations
of self-interest alone. Heartless and merciless, it has no senti-
ments of pity, sympathy, or honor, to make it pause in its remorse-
less career; and it crushes down all that is of impediment in its
way, as its keels of commerce crush under them the murmuring
and unheeded waves.

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for com-
mercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and
more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths
of baseness men and nations can descend. Commercial greed val-
ues the lives of men no more than it values the lives of ants. The
slave-trade is as acceptable to a people enthralled by that greed, as
the trade in ivory or spices, if the profits are as large. It will by-
and-by endeavor to compound with God and quiet its own con-
science, by compelling those to whom it sold the slaves it bought
or stole, to set them free, and slaughtering them by hecatombs if
they refuse to obey the edicts of its philanthropy.

Justice in no wise consists in meting out to another that exact
measure of reward or punishment which we think and decree his
merit, or what we call his crime, which is more often merely his
error, deserves. The justice of the father is not incompatible
with forgiveness by him of the errors and offences of his child.
The Infinite Justice of God does not consist in meting out exact
measures of punishment for human frailties and sins. We are too
apt to erect our own little and narrow notions of what is right and
just, into the law of justice, and to insist that God shall adopt
that as Kis law; to measure off something with our own little

THE MASTER. 71

tape-line, and call it God's law of justice. Continually we seek to
ennoble our own ignoble love of revenge and retaliation, by mis-
naming it justice.

Nor does justice consist in strictly governing our conduct to-
ward other men by the rigid rules of legal right. If there were a
community anywhere, in which all stood upon the strictness of this
rule, there should be written over its gates, as a warning to the
unfortunates desiring admission to that inhospitable realm, the
words which DANTE says are written over the great gate of Hell :

"LET THOSE WHO ENTER HERE LEAVE HOPE BEHIND!" It IS not

just to pay the laborer in field or factory or workshop his current
wages and no more, the lowest market-value of his labor, for so
long only as we need that labor and he is able to work ; for when
sickness or old age overtakes him, that is to leave him and his
family to starve ; and God will curse with calamity the people in
which the children of the laborer out of work eat the boiled grass
of the field, and mothers strangle their children, that they may buy
food for themselves with the charitable pittance given for burial
expenses. The rules of what is ordinarily termed "Justice," may
be punctiliously observed among the fallen spirits that are the

aristocracy of Hell.

******

Justice, divorced from sympathy, is selfish indifference, not in
the least more laudable than misanthropic isolation. There is
sympathy even among the hair-like oscillatorias, a tribe of simple
plants, armies of which may be discovered, with the aid of the
microscope, in the tiniest bit of scum from a stagnant pool. For
these will place themselves, as if it were by agreement, in separate
companies, on the side of a vessel containing them, and seem
marching upward in rows ; and when a swarm grows weary of its
situation, and has a mind to change its quarters, each army holds
on its way without confusion or intermixture, proceeding with
great regularity and order, as if under the directions of wise lead-
ers. The ants and bees give each other mutual assistance, beyond
what is required by that which human creatures are apt to regard
as the strict law of justice.

Surely \ve need but reflect a little, to be convinced that the indi-
vidual man is but a fraction of the unit of society, and that he is
indissolubly connected with the rest of his race. Not only the
actions, but the will and thoughts of other men make or mar his

/2 MORALS AND DOGMA.

fortunes, control his destinies, are unto him life or death, dishonor
or honor. The epidemics, physical and moral, contagious and infec-
tious, public opinion, popular delusions, enthusiasms, and the other
great electric phenomena and currents, moral and intellectual,
prove the universal sympathy-. The vote of a single and obscure
man, the utterance of self-will, ignorance, conceit, or spite, decid-
ing an election and placing Folly or Incapacity or Baseness in a
Senate, involves the country in war, sweeps away our fortunes,
slaughters our sons, renders the labors of a life unavailing, and
pushes us, helpless, with all our intellect to resist, into the grave.

These considerations ought to teach us that justice to others
and to ourselves is the same ; that we cannot define our duties by
mathematical lines ruled by the square, but must fill with them
the great circle traced by the compasses; that the circle of hu-
manity is the limit, and we are but the point in its centre, the
drops in the great Atlantic, the atom or particle, bound by a mys-
terious law of attraction which we term sympathy to every other
atom in the mass ; that the physical and moral welfare of others
cannot be indifferent to us ; that we have a direct and immediate
interest in the public morality and popular intelligence, in the
well-being and physical comfort of the people at large. The igno-
rance of the people, their pauperism and destitution, and conse-
quent degradation, their brutalization and demoralization, are all
diseases ; and we cannot rise high enough above the people, nor
shut ourselves up from them enough, to escape the miasmatic con-
tagion and the great magnetic currents.

Justice is peculiarly indispensable to nations. The unjust State
is doomed of God to calamity and ruin. This is the teaching of
the Eternal Wisdom and of history. " Righteousness exalteth a
nation ; but wrong is a reproach to nations." " The Throne is
established by Righteousness. Let the lips of the Ruler pronounce
the sentence that is Divine ; and his mouth do no wrong in judg-
ment!" The nation that adds province to province by fraud and
violence, that encroaches on the weak and plunders its wards, and
violates its treaties and the obligation of its contracts, and for the
law of honor and fair-dealing substitutes the exigencies of greed
and the base precepts of policy and craft and the ignoble tenets of
expediency, is predestined to destruction ; for here, as with the in-
dividual, the consequences of wrong are inevitable and eternal.
A sentence is written against all that is unjust, written by God

THE MASTER. 73

in the nature of man and in the nature of the Universe, because it
is in the nature of the Infinite God. No wrong is really successful.
The gain of injustice is a loss; its pleasure, suffering. Iniquity
often seems to prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame. If
its consequences pass by the doer, they fall upon and crush his
children. It is a philosophical, physical, and moral truth, in the
form of a threat, that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children, to the third and fourth generation of those who vio-
late His laws. After a long while, the day of reckoning always
comes, to nation as to individual ; and always the knave deceives
himself, and proves a failure.

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice and wrong pay to virtue and
justice. It is Satan attempting to clothe himself in the angelic
vesture of light. It is equally detestable in morals, politics, and
religion ; in the man and in the nation. To do injustice under the
pretence of equity and fairness ; to reprove vice in public and com-
mit it in private ; to pretend to charitable opinion and censoriously
condemn ; to profess the principles of Masonic beneficence, and
close the ear to the wail of distress and the cry of suffering; to
eulogize the intelligence of the people, and plot to deceive and be-
tray them by means of their ignorance and simplicity ; to prate of
purity, and peculate; of honor, and basely abandon a sinking
cause ; of disinterestedness, and sell one's vote for place and pow-
er, are hypocrisies as common as they are infamous and disgrace-
ful. To steal the livery of the Court of God to serve the Devil with-
al ; to pretend to believe in a God of mercy and a Redeemer of love,
and persecute those of a different faith ; to devour widows' houses,
and for a pretence make long prayers ; to preach continence, and
wallow in lust ; to inculcate humility, and in pride surpass Lucifer ;
to pay tithe, and omit the weightier matters of the law, judgment,
mercy, and faith ; to strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel ; to make
clean the outside of the cup and platter, keeping them full within
of extortion and excess ; to appear outwardly righteous unto men,
but within be full of hypocrisy and iniquity, is indeed to be like
unto whited sepulchres, which appear beautiful outward, but are
within full of bones of the dead and of all uncleanness.

The Republic cloaks its ambition with the pretence of a desire
and duty to "extend the area of freedom," and claims it as its
"manifest destiny" to annex other Republics or the States or
Provinces of others to itself, by open violence, or under obsolete,

6

74 MORALS AND DOGMA.

empty, and fraudulent titles. The Empire' founded by a successful
soldier, claims its ancient or natural boundaries, and makes neces-
sity and its safety the plea for open robbery. The great Merchant
Nation, gaining foothold in the Orient, finds a continual necessity
for extending its dominion by arms, and subjugates India. The
great Royalties and Despotisms, without a plea, partition among
themselves a Kingdom, dismember Poland, and prepare to wrangle
over the dominions of the Crescent. To maintain the balance of
power is a plea for the obliteration of States. Carthage, Genoa,
and Venice, commercial Cities only, must acquire territory by force
or fraud, and become States. Alexander marches to the Indus ;
Tamerlane seeks universal empire; the Saracens conquer Spain
and threaten Vienna.

The thirst for power is never satisfied. It is insatiable. Neither
men nor nations ever have power enough. When Rome was the
mistress of the world, the Emperors caused themselves to be wor-
shipped as gods. The Church of Rome claimed despotism over
the soul, and over the whole life from the cradle to the grave. It
gave and sold absolutions for past and future sins. It claimed to
be infallible in matters of faith. It decimated Europe to purge it
of heretics. It decimated America to convert the Mexicans and
Peruvians. It gave and took away thrones ; and by excommuni-
cation and interdict closed the gates of Paradise against Nations.
Spain, haughty with its dominion over the Indies, endeavored to
crush out Protestantism in the Netherlands, while Philip the
Second married the Queen of England, and the pair sought to win
that kingdom back to its allegiance to the Papal throne. After-
ward Spain attempted to conquer it with her "invincible" Ar-
mada. Napoleon set his relatives and captains on thrones, and
parcelled among them half of Europe. The Czar rules over an
empire more gigantic than Rome. The history of all is or will be
the same, — acquisition, dismemberment, ruin. There is a judg-
ment of God against all that is unjust.

To seek to subjugate the will of others and take the soul cap-
tive, because it is the exercise of the highest power, seems to be the
highest object of human ambition. It is at the bottom of all pros-
elyting and propagandism, from that of Mesmer to that of the
Church of Rome and the French Republic. That was the aposto-
late alike of Joshua and of Mahomet. Masonry alone preacnes
Toleration, the right of man to abide by his own faith, tne right

THE MASTER. 75

of all States to govern themselves. It rebukes alike the monarch
who seeks to extend his dominions by conquest, the Church
that claims the right to repress heresy by fire and steel, and the con-
federation of States that insist on maintaining a union by force
and restoring brotherhood by slaughter and subjugation.

It is natural, when we are wronged, to desire revenge; and to
persuade ourselves that we desire it less for our own satisfaction
than to prevent a repetition of the wrong, to which the doer would
be encouraged by immunity coupled with the profit of the wrong.
To submit to be cheated is to encourage the cheater to continue ;
and we are quite apt to regard ourselves as God's chosen instru-
ments to inflict His vengeance, and for Him and in His stead to
discourage wrong by making it fruitless and its punishment sure.
Revenge has been said to be "a kind of wild justice;" but it is
always taken in anger, and therefore is unworthy of a great soul,
which ought not to suffer its equanimity to be disturbed by ingrat-
itude or villainy. The injuries done us by the base are as much
unworthy of our angry notice as those done us by the insects and
the beasts; and when we crush the adder, or slay the wolf or
hyena, we should do it without being moved to anger, and with no
more feeling of revenge than we have in rooting up a noxious weed.

And if it be not in human nature not to take revenge by way of
punishment, let the Mason truly consider that in doing so he is
God's agent, and so let his revenge be measured by justice and
tempered by mercy. The law of God is, that the consequences of
wrong and cruelty and crime shall be their punishment; and the
injured and the wronged and the indignant are as much His instru-
ments to enforce that law, as the diseases and public detestation,
and the verdict of history and the execration of posterity are. No
one will say that the Inquisitor who has racked and burned the
innocent; the Spaniard who hewed Indian infants, living, into
pieces with his sword, and fed the mangled limbs to his blood-
hounds ; the military tyrant who has shot men without trial, the
knave who has robbed or betrayed his State, the fraudulent banker
or bankrupt who has beggared orphans, the public officer who has
violated his oath, the judge who has sold injustice, the legislator
who has enabled Incapacity to work the ruin of the State, ought
not to be punished. Let them be so ; and let the injured or the
sympathizing be the instruments of God's just vengeance ; but
always out of a higher feeling than mere personal revenge.

7 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Remember that every moral characteristic of man finds its pro--
totype among creatures of lower intelligence ; that the cruel foul-
ness of the hyena, the savage rapacity of the wolf, the merciless
rage of the tiger, the crafty treachery of the panther, are found
among mankind, and ought to excite no other emotion, when
found in the man, than when found in the beast. Why should the
true man be angry with the geese that hiss, the peacocks that
strut, the asses that bray, and the apes that imitate and chatter,
although they wear the human form? Always, also, it remains
true, that it is more noble to forgive than to take revenge; and
that, in general, we ought too much to despise those who wrong
us. to feel the emotion of anger, or to desire revenge.

At the sphere of the Sun, you are in the region of LIGHT. *
* * The Hebrew word for gold, ZAHAB, also means Light, of
which the Sun is to the Earth the great source. So, in the great
Oriental allegory of the Hebrews, the River PISON compasses the
land of Gold or Light; and the River GIHON the land of Ethiopia
or Darkness.

What light is, we no more know than the ancients did. Accord-
ing to the modern hypothesis, it is not composed of luminous'
particles shot out from the sun with immense velocity ; but that
body only impresses, on the ether which fills all space, a powerful
vibratory movement that extends, in the form of luminous waves,
beyond the most distant planets, supplying them with light and
heat. To the ancients, it was an outflowing from the Deity. To
us, as to them, it is the apt symbol of truth and knowledge. To us,
also, the upward journey of the soul through the Spheres is symbol-
ical ; but we are as little informed as they whence the soul comes,
where it has its origin, and whither it goes after death. They en-
deavored to have some belief and faith, some creed, upon those
points. At the present day, men are satisfied to think nothing in
regard to all that, and only to believe that the soul is a something
separate from the body and out-living it, but whether existing be-
fore it, neither to inquire nor care. No one asks whether it ema-
nates from the Deity, or is created out of nothing, or is generated
like the body, and the issue of the souls of the father and the
mother. Let us not smile, therefore, at the ideas of the ancients,
until we have a better belief; but accept their symbols" as meaning1
that the soul is of a Divine nature, originating in a sphere nearer
the Deity, and returning to that when freed from the enthrallment

THE MASTER. 77

of the body ; and that it can only return there when purified of
all the sordidness and sin which have, as it were, become part of
its substance, by its connection with the body.

It is not strange that, thousands of years ago, men worshipped
the Sun, and that to-day that worship continues among the Par-
sees. Originally they looked beyond the orb to the invisible God,
of whom the Sun's light, seemingly identical with generation and
life, was the manifestation and outflowing. Long before the
Chaldaean shepherds watched it on their plains, it came up regu-
larly, as it now does, in the morning, like a god, and again sank,
like a king retiring, in the west, to return again in due time in the
same array of majesty. We worship Immutability. It was that
steadfast, immutable character of the Sun that the men of Baalbec
worshipped. His light-giving and life-giving powers were second-
ary attributes. The one grand idea that compelled worship was
the characteristic of God which they saw reflected in his light,
and fancied they saw in its originality the changelessness of Deity.
He had seen thrones crumble, earthquakes shake the world and
hurl down mountains. Beyond Olympus, beyond the Pillars of
Hercules, he had gone daily to his abode, and had come daily again
in the morning to behold the temples they built to his worship.
They personified him as BRAHMA, AMUN, OSIRIS, BEL, ADONIS,
MALKARTH, MITHRAS, and APOLLO; and the nations that did so
grew old and died. Moss grew on the capitals of the great col-
umns of his temples, and he shone on the moss. Grain by grain
the dust of his temples crumbled and fell, and was borne off on
the wind, and still he shone on crumbling column and architrave.
The roof fell crashing on the pavement, and he shone in on the
Holy of Holies with unchanging rays. It was not strange that
men worshipped the Sun.

There is a water-plant, on whose broad leaves the drops of water
roll about without uniting, like drops of mercury. So arguments
on points of faith, in politics or religion, roll over the surface of
the mind. An argument that convinces one mind has no effect on
another. Few intellects, or souls that are the negations of intel-
lect, have any logical power or capacity. There is a singular obli-
quity in the human mind that makes the false logic more effective
than the true with nine-tenths of those who are regarded as men
of intellect. Even among the judges, not one in ten can argue
logically. Each mind sees the truth, distorted through its own

7 MORALS AND DOGMA,

medium. Truth, to most men, is like matter in the spheroidal
state. Like a drop of cold water on the surface of a red-hot metal
plate, it dances, trembles, and spins, and never comes into contact
with it; and the mind may be plunged into truth, as the hand
moistened with sulphurous acid may into melted metal, and be not

even warmed by the immersion.

******

The word Khairum or Khurum is a compound one. Gesenius
renders Khurum by the word noble or free-born: Khur meaning
white, noble. It also means the opening of a window, the socket
of the eye. Khri also means white, or an opening; and Khris, the
orb of the Sun, in Job, viii. 13, and x. 7. Krishna is the Hindu
Sun-God. Khur, the Parsi word, is the literal name of the Sun.

From Kur or Khur, the Sun, comes Khora, a name of Lower
Egypt. The Sun, Bryant says in his Mythology, was called Kur;
and Plutarch says that the Persian? called the Sun Kuros. Knrios,
Lord, in Greek, like Adonai, Lord, in Phoenician and Hebrew,
was applied to the Sun. Many places were sacred to the Sun, and
called Kura, Kuria, Kuropolis, Kurene, Kureschata, Kuresta, and
Corusia in Scythia.

The Egyptian Deity called by the Greeks "Horus," was Her-Ra,
or Har-ocris, Hor or Har, the Sun. Hari is a Hindu name of the
Sun. Ari-al, Ar-es, Ar, Aryaman, Areimonios, the AR meaning
Fire or Flame, are of the same kindred. Hermes or Har-mcs,
(Aram, Remus, Haram, Harameias}, was Kadmos, the Divine
Light or Wisdom. Mar-kuri, says Movers, is Mar, the Sun.

In the Hebrew, AOOR, 11K, is Light, Fire, or the Sun.
Cyrus, said Ctesias, was so named from Kuros, the Sun. Kuris,
Hesychius says, was Adonis. Apollo, the Sun-god, was called
Kurraios, from Kurra, a city in Phocis. The people of Kurene,
originally Ethiopians or Cuthites, worshipped the Sun under the
title of Achoor and Achor.

We know, through a precise testimony in the ancient annals of
Tsur, that the principal festivity of Mal-karth, the incarnation of
the Sun at the Winter Solstice, held at Tsur, was called his re-birth
or his awakening, and that it was celebrated by means of a pyre,
on which the god was supposed to regain, through the aid of fire,
a new life. This festival was celebrated in the* -month Peri tins
(Barith), the second day of which corresponded to the 25th of
December. KHUR-UM, King of Tyre, Movers says, first performed

THE MASTER. 79

this ceremony. These facts we learn from Josephus, Sen-ins on
the ^Eneid, and the Dionysiacs of Nonnus; and through a coinci-
dence that cannot be fortuitous, the same day was at Rome the
Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the festal day of the invincible Sun.
Under this title, HERCULES, HAR-acles, was worshipped at Tsur.
Thus, while the temple was being erected, the death and resurrec-
tion of a Sun-God was annually represented at Tsur, by Solomon's
ally, at the winter solstice, by the pyre of MAL-KARTH, the Tsurian
Haracles.

AROERIS or HAR-oeris, the elder HORUS, is from the same old
root that in the Hebrew has the form Aur, or, with the definite
article prefixed, Hour, Light, or the Light, splendor, flame, the Sun
and his rays. The hieroglyphic of the younger HORUS was the
point in a circle ; of the Elder, a pair of eyes ; and the festival of
the thirtieth day of the month Epiphi, when the sun and moon
were supposed to be in the same right line with the earth, was
called "The birth-day of the eyes of Horus."

In a papyrus published by Champollion, this god is styled "Har-
oeri, Lord of the Solar Spirits, the beneficent eye of the Sun."
Plutarch calls him "Har-pocrates;" but there is no trace of the
latter part of the name in the hieroglyphic legends. He is the son
of OSIRIS and Isis ; and is represented sitting on a throne sup-
ported by lions; the same word, in Egyptian, meaning Lion and
Snn. So Solomon made a great throne of ivory, plated with gold,
with six steps, at each arm of which was a lion, and one on each
side to each step, making seven on each side.

Again, the Hebrew word Tl, Khi, means "living;" and CS1
rani, "was, or shall be, raised or lifted up." The latter is the same
as DTI, CViK, D"in, room, arodm, hanlin, whence Aram, for Syria,
or Aramcea, High-land. Khairiim, therefore, would mean "was
raised up to life, or living."

S6, in Arabic, hrm, an unused root, meant, "was high," "made
great" "exalted;" and Hirm means an ox, the symbol of the Sun
in Taurus, at the Vernal Equinox.

KHURUM, therefore, improperly called Hiram, is KHUR-OM, the
same as Her-ra, Her-ines, and Hcr-ades, the "Heracles Tyrius
In-cictus" the personification of Light and the Son, the Mediator,
Redeemer, and Saviour. From the Egyptian word Ra came the
Coptic Ouro, and the Hebrew Aur, Light. Har-ocri, is PI or or
Har, the chief or master. Hor is also heat ; and hora, season or

8o

MORALS AND DOGMA.

hour ; and hence, in several African dialects, as names of the Sun,
Airo, Ayero, eer, uiro, ghurrah, and the like. The royal name
rendered Pharaoh, was PHRA, that is, Pai-ra, the Sun.

The legend of the contest between Hor-ra and Set, or Set-nu-bi,
the same as Bar or Bal, is older than that of the strife between
Osiris and Typhon; as old, at least, as the nineteenth dynasty. It
is called in the Book of the Dead, "The day of the battle between
Horus and Set." The later myth connects itself with Phoenicia
and Syria. The body of OSIRIS went ashore at Gebal or Byblos,
sixty miles above Tsur. You will not fail to notice that in the
name of each murderer of Khurum, that of the Evil God Bal is

found.

******

Har-oeri was the god of TIME, as well as of Life. The Egyptian
legend was that the King of Byblos cut down the tamarisk-tree
containing the body of OSIRIS, and made of it a column for his
palace. Isis, employed in the palace, obtained possession of the
column, took the body out of it, and carried it away. Apuleius
describes her as "a beautiful female, over whose divine neck her
long thick hair hung in graceful ringlets ;" and in the procession
female attendants, with ivory combs, seemed to dress and ornament
the royal hair of the goddess. The palm-tree, and the lamp in the
shape of a boat, appeared in the procession. If the symbol we are
speaking of is not a mere modern invention, it is to these things it
alludes.

The identity of the legends is also confirmed by this hieroglyphic
picture, copied from an ancient Egyptian monument, which may
also enlighten you as to the Lion's grip and the Master's gavel.

THE MASTER. 8l

2tf, in the ancient Phoenician character,^ ^X and in the Sama-
ritan, ^ /f, A B, (the two letters representing the numbers i, 2,
or Unity and Duality, means Father, and is a primitive noun, com-
mon to all the Semitic languages.

It also means an Ancestor, Originator, Inventor, Head, Chief or
Ruler, Manager, Overseer, Master, Priest, Prophet.

\2N is simply Father, when it is in construction, that is, when
it precedes another word, and in English the preposition "of" is
interposed, as ^K-^N, Abi-Al, the Father of Al.

Also, the final Yod means "my"; so that ''iN by itself means
"My father." i^tf "PIT, David my father, 2. Chron. ii. 3.

1, (Vav) final is the possessive pronoun "his"'; and V3N, Abiu
(which we read "Abif") means "of my father's." Its full mean-
ing, as connected with the name of Khurum, no doubt is, "for-
merly one of my father's servants," or "slaves."

The name of the Phrenician artificer is, in Samuel and Kings,
QTn and DWI— [2 Sam. v. n ; i Kings, v. 15; I Kings, vii. 40].
In Chronicles it is DTin, with the addition of ^K. [2 Chron. ii. 12] ;
and of V2K. [2 Chron. iv. 16].

It is merely absurd to add the word "Abif," or "Abiff," as part
of the name of the artificer. And it is almost as absurd to add
the word "Abi," which was a title and not part of the name. Jo-
seph says [Gen. xlv. 8], "God has constituted me 'Ab I'Paraah,
as Father to Paraah, i. e., Vizier or Prime Minister." So Haman
was called the Second Father of Artaxerxes ; and when King Khu-
rum used the phrase "Khurum Abi," he meant that the artificer
he sent Schlomoh was the principal or chief workman in his line
at Tsur.

A medal copied by Montfaucon exhibits a female nursing a child,
with ears of wheat in her hand, and the legend was (lao.) She is
seated on clouds, a star at her head, and three ears of wheat rising
from an altar before her.

HORUS was the mediator, who was buried three days, was regen-
erated, and triumphed over the evil principle.

The word HERI, in Sanscrit, means Shepherd, as well as Saviour.
CRISHNA is called Hen, as JESUS called Himself the Good Shep-
herd.

*nn, Khar, means an aperture of a window, a cave, or the eye.
Also it means white. In Syriac, f j g^.

'in also means an opening, and noble, free-born, high-born.

82 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Din, KHURM means consecrated, devoted; in yEthiopic ^ /. o j
It is the name of a city, [Josh. xix. 38] ; and of a man, [Ezr. ii. 32,
x. 31 ; Neh. iii. u].

Him, Khirah, means nobility, a noble race.

Buddha is declared to comprehend in his own person the
essence of the Hindu Trimurti; and hence the tri-literal mono-
syllable Om or Aum is applied to him as being essentially the
same as Brahma- Vishnu-Siva. He is the same as Hermes, Thoth,
Taut, and Teutates. One of his names is Heri-maya or Her-
maya, which are evidently the same name as Hermes and Khirm
or Khurm. Heri, in Sanscrit, means Lord.

A learned Brother places over the two symbolic pillars, from
right to left, the two words Z'^flfand 2£\7Q> ^ and ^J/2,Inu
and BAL : followed by the hieroglyphic equivalent, <y^ of the
Sun-God, Amun-ra. Is it an accidental coincidence, r~3 that in
the name of each murderer are the two names of the Good and Evil
Deities of the Hebrews ; for Yn-bel is but Yehu-Bal orYeho-Bal?
and that the three final syllables of the names, a, o, urn, make
A.'.U.'.M.'. the sacred word of the Hindoos, meaning the Triune-
God, Life-giving, Life-preserving, Life-destroying: represented by
the mystic character Y" ?

The genuine Acacia, also, is the thorny tamarisk, the sanle tree
which grew up around the body of Osiris. It was a sacred tree
among the Arabs, who made of it the idol Al-Uzza, which Mo-
hammed destroyed. It is abundant as a bush in the Desert of
Thur : and of it the "crown of thorns" was composed, which was
set on the forehead of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a fit type of im-
mortality on account of its tenacity of life ; for it has been known,
when planted as a door-post, to take root again and shoot out

budding boughs above the threshold.

******

Every commonwealth must have its periods of trial and transi-
tion, especially if it engages in war. It is certain at some time to
be wholly governed by agitators appealing to all the baser ele-
ments of the popular nature ; by moneyed corporations ; by those
enriched by the depreciation of government securities or paper ; by
small attorneys, schemers, money-jobbers, speculators and adven-
turers— an ignoble oligarchy, enriched by the distresses of the State,
and fattened on the miseries of the people. Then all the deceitful
visions of equality and the rights of man end; and the wronged

THE MASTER. 83

and plundered State can regain a real liberty only by passing
through "great varieties of untried being," purified in its trans-
migration by fire and blood.

In a Republic, it soon comes to pass that parties gather round
the negative and positive poles of some opinion or notion, and
that the intolerant spirit of a triumphant majority will allow no
deviation from the standard of orthodoxy which it has set up for
itself. Freedom of opinion will be professed and pretended to,
but every one will exercise it at the peril of being banished from
political communion with those who hold the reins and prescribe
the policy to be pursued. Slavishness to party and obsequiousness
to the popular whims go hand in hand. Political independence
only occurs in a fossil state ; and men's opinions grow out of the
acts they have been constrained to do or sanction. Flattery,
either of individual or people, corrupts both the receiver and the
giver ; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to
kings. A Caesar, securely seated in power, cares less for it than a
free democracy ; nor will his appetite for it grow to exorbitance,
as that of a people will, until it becomes insatiate. The effect
of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please ;
to a people, it is to a great extent the same. If accessible to flat-
tery, as this is always interested, and resorted to on low and base
motives, and for evil purposes, either individual or people is sure,
in doing what it pleases, to do what in honor and conscience
should have been left undone. One' ought not even to risk con-
gratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints ; and as
both individuals and peoples are prone to make a bad use of power,
to flatter them, wrhich is a sure way to mislead them, well deserves
to be called a crime.

The first principle in a Republic ought to be, "that no man or
set of men is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or pri-
vileges from the community, but in consideration of public ser-
vices ; which not being descendible, neither ought the offices of
magistrate, legislature, ^nor judge, to be hereditary." It is a volume
of Truth and Wisdom, a lesson for the study of nations, em-
bodied in a single sentence, and expressed in language which
every man can understand. If a deluge of despotism were
to overthrow the world, and destroy all institutions under
which freedom is protected, so that they should no longer be re-
membered among men, this sentence, preserved, would be suffi-

84 MORALS AND DOGMA.

cient to rekindle the fires of liberty and revive the race of free
men.

But, to preserve liberty, another must be added: "that a free
State does not confer office as a reward, especially for questionable
services, unless she seeks her own ruin; but all officers are em-
ployed by her, in consideration solely of their will and ability to
render service in the future ; and therefore that the best and most
competent are always to be preferred."

For, if there is to be any other rule, that of hereditary succession
is perhaps as good as any. By no other rule is it possible to pre-
serve the liberties of the State. By no other to intrust the power of
making- the laws to those only who have that keen instinctive sense
of injustice and wrong which enables them to detect baseness and
corruption in their most secret hiding-places, and that moral
courage and generous manliness and gallant independence that
make them fearless in dragging out the perpetrators to the light
of day, and calling down upon them the scorn and indignation of
the world. The flatterers of the people are never such men. On
the contrary, a time always comes to a Republic, when it is not
content, like Tiberius, with a single Sejanus, but must have a
host ; and when those most prominent in the lead of affairs are
men without reputation, statesmanship, ability, or information,
the mere hacks of party, owing their places to trickery and want
of qualification, with none of the qualities of head or heart that
make great and wise men, and, at the same time, filled with all
the narrow conceptions and bitter intolerance of political bigotry.
These die ; and the world is none the wiser for what they have
said and done. Their names sink in the bottomless pit of obliv-
ion ; but their acts of folly or knavery curse the body politic and
at last prove its ruin.

Politicians, in a free State, are generally hollow, heartless, and
selfish. Their own aggrandisement is the end of their patriotism ;
and they always look with secret satisfaction on the disappoint-
ment or fall of one whose loftier genius and superior talents over-
shadow their own self-importance, or whose integrity and incor-
ruptible honor are in the way of their selfish ends. The influence
of the small aspirants is always against the great man. His
accession to power may be almost for a lifetime. One of them-
selves will be more easily displaced, and each hopes to succeed
him; and so it at length comes to pass that men impudently

THE MASTER. 85

aspire to and actually win the highest stations, who are unfit for
the lowest clerkships ; and incapacity and mediocrity become the
surest passports to office.

The consequence is, that those who feel themselves competent
and qualified to serve the people, refuse with disgust to enter into
the struggle for office, where the wicked and Jesuitical doctrine
that all is fair in politics is an excuse for every species of low
villainy ; and those who seek even the highest places of the State
do not rely upon the power of a magnanimous spirit, on the sym-
pathizing impulses of a great soul, to stir and move the people to
generous, noble, and heroic resolves, and to wise and manly action ;
but, like spaniels erect on their hind legs, with fore-paws obsequi-
ously suppliant, fawn, flatter, and actually beg for votes. Rather
than descend to this, they stand contemptuously aloof, disdain-
fully refusing to court the people, and acting on the maxim, that
"mankind has no title to demand that we shall serve them in

spite of themselves."

******

It is lamentable to see a country split into factions, each fol-
lowing this or that great or brazen- fronted leader with a blind,
unreasoning, unquestioning hero-worship ; it is contemptible to
see it divided into parties, whose sole end is the spoils of victory,
and their chiefs the low, the base, the venal and the small. Such
a country is in the last stages of decay, and near its end, no matter
how prosperous it may seem to be. It wrangles over the volcano
and the earthquake. But it is certain that no government can be
conducted by the men of the people, and for the people, without a
rigid adherence to those principles which our reason commends
as fixed and sound. These must be the tests of parties, men, and
measures. Once determined, they must be inexorable in their
application, and all must either come up to the standard or de-
clare against it. Men may betray : principles never can. Oppres-
sion is one invariable consequence of misplaced confidence in
treacherous man ; it is never the result of the working or applica-
tion of a sound, just, well-tried principle. Compromises which
bring fundamental principles into doubt, in order to unite in one
party men of antagonistic creeds, are frauds, and end in ruin, the
just and natural consequence of fraud. Whenever you have set-
tled upon your theory and creed, sanction no departure from it in
practice, on any ground of expediency. It is the Master's word.

86

MORALS AND DOGMA.

Yield it up neither to flattery nor force ! Let no defeat or perse-
cution rob you of it! Believe that he who once blundered in
statesmanship will blunder again ; that such blunders are as fatal
as crimes ; and that political near-sightedness does not improve
by age. There are always more impostors than seers among public
men, more false prophets than true ones, more prophets of Baal
than of Jehovah; and Jerusalem is always in danger from the
Assyrians.

Sallust said that after a State has been corrupted by luxury and
idleness, it may by its mere greatness bear up under the burden of
its vices. But even while he wrote, Rome, of which he spoke, had
played out her masquerade of freedom. Other causes than luxury
and sloth destroy Republics. If small, their larger neighbors ex-
tinguish them by absorption. If of great extent, the cohesive
force is too feeble to hold them together, and they fall to pieces by
their own weight. The paltry ambition of small men disintegrates
them. The want of wisdom in their councils creates exasperating
issues. Usurpation of power plays its part, incapacity seconds
corruption, the storm rises, and the fragments of the incoherent
raft strew the sandy shores, reading to mankind another lesson for
it to disregard.

The Forty-Seventh Proposition is older than Pythagoras. It is
this : "In every right-angled triangle, the sum of the" squares of the
base and perpendicular is equal to the square of the hypothenuse."

THE MASTER. 87

The square of a number is the product of that number, multi-
plied by itself. Thus, 4 is the square of 2, and 9 of 3.

The first ten numbers are: i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;

their squares are i, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100 ;

and 3, 5, 7, 9, 1 1, 13, 15, 17, 19

are the differences between each square and that which precedes
it ; giving us the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 9.

Of these numbers, the square of 3 and 4, added together, gives
the square of 5 ; and those of 6 and 8, the square of 10 ; and if a
right-angled triangle be formed, the base measuring 3 or 6 parts,
and the perpendicular 4 or 8 parts, the hypothenuse will be 5 or 10
parts ; and if a square is erected on each side, these squares being
subdivided into squares each side of which is one part in length,
there will be as many of these in the square erected on the hy-
pothenuse as in the other two squares together.

Now the Egyptians arranged their deities in Triads — the
FATHER or the Spirit or Active Principle or Generative Power;
the MOTHER, or Matter, or the Passive Principle, or the Concep-
tive Power ; and the SON, Issue or Product, the Universe, proceed-
ing from the two principles. These were OSIRIS, Isis, and HORUS.
In the same way, PLATO gives us Thought the Father; Primitive
Matter the Mother; and Kosmos the World, the Son, the Universe
animated by a soul. Triads of the same kind are found in the
Kabalah.

PLUTARCH says, in his book De Iside et Osiride, "But the
better and diviner nature consists of three, — that which exists
within the Intellect only, and Matter, and that \vhich proceeds
from these, which the Greeks call Kosmos; of which three, Plato
is wont to call the Intelligible, the 'Idea, Exemplar, and Father' ;
Matter, 'the Mother, the Nurse, and the place and receptacle of
generation' ; and the issue of these two, 'the Offspring and Gen-
esis,' " the KOSMOS, "a word signifying equally Beauty and Order,
or the Universe itself." You will not fa.il to notice that Beauty is
symbolized by the Junior Warden in the South. Plutarch con-
tinues to say that the Egyptians compared the universal nature to
what they called the most beautiful and perfect triangle, as Plato
does, in that nuptial diagram, as it is termed, which he has intro-
duced into his Commonwealth. Then he adds that this triangle
is right-angled, and its sides respectively as 3, 4. and 5 ; and he
says, "We must suppose that the perpendicular is designed by them

88

MORALS AND DOGMA.

to represent the masculine nature, the base the feminine, and that
the hypothenuse is to be looked upon as the offspring of both ;
and accordingly the first of them will aptly enough represent
OSIRIS, or the prime cause; the second, Isis, or the receptive ca-
pacity ; the last, HORUS, or the common effect of the other two.
For 3 is the first number which is composed of even and odd ; and
4 is a square whose side is equal to the even number 2; but 5,
being generated, as it were, out of the preceding numbers, 2 and
3, may be said to have an equal relation to both of them, as to its

common parents."

******

The clasped liands is another symbol which was used by PYTHAG-
ORAS. It represented the number 10, the sacred number in which
all the preceding numbers were contained ; the number expressed
by the mysterious TETRACTYS, a figure borrowed by him and the
Hebrew priests alike from the Egyptian sacred science, and which
ought to be replaced among the symbols of the Master's Degree,
where it of right belongs. The Hebrews formed it thus, with the
letters oi the Divine name :

The Tctractys thus leads you, not only to the study of the
Pythagorean philosophy as to numbers, but also to the Kabalah,
and will aid you in discovering the True Word, and understanding
what was meant by "The Music of the Spheres." Modern science
strikingly confirms the ideas of Pythagoras in regard to the prop-
erties of numbers, and that they govern in the Universe. Long
before Lis time, nature had extracted her cube-roots and her
squares.

*******

All the FORCES at man's disposal or under man's control, or
subject to man's influence, are his working tools'- The friendship
and sympathy that knit heart to heart are a force like the attrac-

THE MASTER. 89

tion of cohesion, by which the sandy particles became the solid
rock. If this law of attraction or cohesion were taken away, the
material worlds and suns would dissolve in an instant into thin
invisible vapor. If the ties of friendship, affection, and love were
annulled, mankind would become a raging multitude of wild and
savage beasts of prey. The sand hardens into rock under the im-
mense superincumbent pressure of the ocean, aided sometimes by
the irresistible energy of fire : and when the pressure of calamity
and danger is upon an order or a country, the members or the
citizens ought to be the more closely united by the cohesion of
sympathy and inter-dependence.

Morality is a force. It is the magnetic attraction of the heart
toward Truth and Virtue. The needle, imbued with this mystic
property, and pointing unerringly to the north, carries the mari-
ner safely over the trackless ocean, through storm and darkness,
until his glad eyes behold the beneficent beacons that welcome him
to safe and hospitable harbor. Then the hearts of those who love
him are gladdened, and his home made happy ; and this gladness
and happiness are due to the silent, unostentatious, unerring mon-
itor that was the sailor's guide over the weltering waters. But if
drifted too far northward, he finds the needle no longer true, but
pointing elsewhere than to the north, what a feeling of helpless-
ness falls upon the dismayed mariner, what utter loss of energy
and courage ! It is as if the great axioms of morality were to fail
and be no longer true, leaving the human soul to drift helplessly,
eyeless like Prometheus, at the mercy of the uncertain, faithless
currents of the deep.

Honor and Duty are the pole-stars of a Mason, the Dioscuri, by
never losing sight of which he may avoid disastrous shipwreck.
These Palinurus watched, until, overcome by sleep, and the ves-
sel no longer guided truly, he fell into and was swallowed up by
the insatiable sea. So the Mason who loses sight of these, and is
no longer governed by their beneficent and potential force, is
lost, and sinking out of sight, will disappear unhonored and
unwept.

The force of electricity, analogous to that of sympathy, and by
means of which great thoughts or base suggestions, the utterances
of noble or ignoble natures, flash instantaneously over the nerves
of nations ; the force of growth, fit type of immortality, lying
dorm?nt three thousand years in the wheat-grains buried with
7

9O MORALS AND DOGMA.

their mummies by the old Egyptians ; the forces of expansion and
contraction, developed in the earthquake and the tornado, and
giving birth to the wonderful achievements of steam, have their
parallelisms in the moral world, in individuals, and nations.
Growth is a necessity for nations as for men. Its cessation is the
beginning of decay. In the nation as well as the plant it is mys-
terious, and it is irresistible. The earthquakes that rend nations
asunder, overturn thrones, and engulf monarchies and republics,
have been long prepared for, like the volcanic eruption. Revolu-
tions have long roots in the past. The force exerted is in direct
proportion to the previous restraint and compression. The true
statesman ought to see in progress the Causes that are in due time
to produce them ; and he who does not is but a blind leader of the
blind.

The great changes in nations, like the geological changes of the
earth, are slowly and continuously wrought. The waters, falling
from Heaven as rain and dews, slowly disintegrate the granite
mountains ; abrade the plains, leaving hills and ridges of denuda-
tion as their monuments ; scoop out the valleys, fill up the seas,
narrow the rivers, and after the lapse of thousands on thousands
of silent centuries, prepare the great alluvia for the growth of that
plant, the snowy envelope of whose seeds is to employ the looms
of the world, and the abundance or penury of whose crops shall
determine whether the weavers and spinners of other realms shall
have work to do or starve.

So Public Opinion is an immense force ; and its currents are as
inconstant and incomprehensible as those of the atmosphere
Nevertheless, in free governments, it is omnipotent ; and the busi-
ness of the statesman is to find the means to shape, control, and
direct it. According as that is done, it is beneficial and conserva-
tive, or destructive and ruinous. The Public Opinion of the civil-
ized world is International Law ; and it is so great a force, though
with no certain and fixed boundaries, that it can even constrain
the victorious despot to be generous, and aid an oppressed people
in its struggle for independence.

Habit is a great force ; it is second nature, even in trees. It is
as strong in nations as in men. So also are Prejudices, which are
given to men and nations as the passions are, — as forces, valuable,
if properly and skillfully availed of; destructive, if unskillfully
handled.

THE MASTER. QI

Above all, the Love of Country, State Pride, the Love of Home,
are forces of immense power. Encourage them all. Insist upon them
in your public men. Permanency of home is necessary to patriot-
ism. A migratory race will have little love of country. State
pride is a mere theory and chimera, where men remove from State
to State with indifference, like the Arabs, who camp here to-day
and there to-morrow.

If you have Eloquence, it is a mighty force. S^e that you use
it for good purposes — to teach, exhort, ennoble the people, and not
to mislead and corrupt them. Corrupt and venal orators are the
assassins of the public liberties and of public morals.

The Will is a force; its limits as yet unknown. It is in the
power of the will that we chiefly see the spiritual and divine in
man. There is a seeming identity between his will that moves
other men, and the Creative Will whose action seems so incompre-
hensible. It is the men of will and action, not the men of pure
intellect, that govern the world.

Finally, the three greatest moral forces are FAITH, whic-h is the
or>y true WISDOM, and the very foundation of all government;
HOPE, which is STRENGTH, and insures success ; and CHARITY,
which is BEAUTY, and alone makes animated, united effort possi-
ble. These forces are within the reach of all men ; and an associa-
tion of men, actuated by them, ought to exercise an immense
power in the world. If Masonry does not, it is because she has
ceased to possess them.

Wisdom in the man or statesman, in king or priest, largely
consists in the due appreciation of these forces ; and upon the
general non-appreciation of some of them the fate of nations often
depends. What hecatombs of lives often hang upon the not
weighing or not sufficiently weighing the force of an idea, such as,
for example, the reverence for a flag, or the blind attachment to a
form or constitution of government !

What errors in political economy and statesmanship are com-
mitted in consequence of the over-estimation or under-estimation
of particular values, or the non-estimation of some among them !
Everything, it is asserted, is the product of human labor ; but the
gold or the diamond which one accidentally finds without labor
is not so. What is the value of the labor bestowed by the husband-
man upon his crops, compared with the value of the sunshine
and rain, without which his labor avails nothing? Commerce

92 MORALS AND DOGMA.

carried on by the labor of man, adds to the value of the products
of the field, the mine, or the workshop, by their transportation to
different markets ; but how much of this increase is due to the
rivers down which these products float, to the winds that urge the
keels of commerce over the ocean !

Who can estimate the value of morality and manliness in a
State, of moral worth and intellectual knowledge ? These are the
sunshine and rajn of the State. The winds, with their changeable,
fickle, fluctuating currents, are apt emblems of the fickle humors
of the populace, its passions, its heroic impulses, its enthusiasms.
Woe to the statesman who does not estimate these as values !

Even music and song are sometimes found to have an incalcula-
ble value. Every nation has some song of a proven value, more
easily counted in lives than dollars. The Marseillaise was worth to
revolutionary France, who shall say how many thousand men?

Peace also is a great element of prosperity and wealth ; a value
not to be calculated. Social intercourse and association of men in
beneficent Orders have a value not to be estimated in coin. The
illustrious examples of the Past of a nation, the memories and im-
mortal thoughts of her great and wise thinkers, statesmen, and
heroes, are the invaluable legacy of that Past to the Present and
future. And all these have not only the values of the loftier and
more excellent and priceless kind, but also an actual money-value,
since it is only when co-operating with or aided or enabled by
these, that human labor creates wealth. They are of the chief
elements of material wealth, as they are of national manliness,

heroism, glory, prosperity, and immortal renown.

******

Providence has appointed the three great disciplines of War, the
Monarchy and the Priesthood, all that the CAMP, the PALACE, and
the TEMPLE may symbolize, to train the multitudes forward to in-
telligent and premeditated combinations for all the great purposes
of society. The result will at length be free governments among
men, when virtue and intelligence become qualities of the multi-
tudes ; but for ignorance such governments are impossible. Man
advances only by degrees. The removal of one pressing calamity
gives eourrge to attempt the removal of the remaining evils, rend-
ering men more sensitive to them, or perhaps sensitive for the first
time. Serfs that writhe under the whip are not disquieted about
their political rights ; manumitted from personal slavery, they be-

THE MASTER.

93

come sensitive to political oppression. Liberated from arbitrary
power, and governed by the law alone, they beg-in to scrutinize the
law itself, and desire to be governed, not only by law, but by what
fliey deem the best law. And when the civil or temporal despot-
ism has been set aside, and the municipal law has been moulded
on the principles of an enlightened jurisprudence, they may wake
to the discovery that they are living under some priestly or ecclesi-
astical despotism, and become desirous of working a reformation
there also.

It is quite true that the advance of humanity is slow, and that
it often pauses and retrogrades. In the kingdoms of the earth we
do not see despotisms retiring and yielding the ground to self-gov-
erning communities. We do not see the churches and priesthoods
of Christendom relinquishing their old task of governing men by
imaginary terrors. Nowhere do we see a populace that could be
s-afely manumitted from such a government. We do not see the
great religious teachers aiming to discover truth for themselves
and for others ; but still ruling the world, and contented and com-
pelled to rule the world, by whatever dogma is already accredited ;
themselves as much bound down by this necessity to govern, as
the populace by their need of government. Poverty in all its
most hideous forms still exists in the great cities ; and the cancer
of pauperism has its roots in the hearts of kingdoms. Men there
take no measure of their wants and their own power to supply
them, but live and multiply like the beasts of the field, — Providence
having apparently ceased to care for them. Intelligence never
visits these, or it makes its appearance as some new development
of villainy. War has not ceased ; still there are battles and
sieges. Homes are still unhappy, and tears and anger and spite
make hells where there should be heavens. So much the more
necessity for Masonry ! So much wider the field of its labors ! So
much the more need for it to begin to be true to itself, to revive
from its asphyxia, to repent of its apostacy to its true creed !

Undoubtedly, labor and death and the sexual passion are essen-
tial and permanent conditions of human existence, and render
perfection and a millenium on earth impossible. Always, — it is the
decree of Fate ! — the vast majority of men must toil to live, and
cannot find time to cultivate the intelligence. Man, knowing he
is to die, will not sacrifice the present enjoyment for a greater one
in the future. The love of woman cannot die out, and it has a

94 MORALS AND DOGMA.

terrible and uncontrollable fate, increased by the refinements of
civilization. Woman is the veritable syren or goddess of the
young. But society can be improved ; and free government is
possible for States ; and freedom of thought and conscience is no
longer wholly Utopian. Already we see that Emperors prefer to be
elected by universal suffrage ; that States are conveyed to Empires
by vote ; and that Empires are administered with something of the
spirit of a Republic, being little else than democracies with a single
head, ruling through one man, one representative, instead of an
assembly of representatives. And if Priesthoods still govern, they
now come before the laity to prove, by stress of argument, that they
ought to govern. They are obliged to evoke the very reason which
they are bent on supplanting.

Accordingly, men become daily more free, because the freedom
of the man lies in his reason. He can reflect upon his own future
conduct, and summon up its consequences ; he can take wide views
of human life, and lay down rules for constant guidance. Thus
he is relieved of the tyranny of sense and passion, and enabled at
any time to live according to the whole light of the knowledge
that is within him, instead of being driven, like a dry leaf on the
wings of the wind, by every present impulse. Herein lies the free-
dom of the man as regarded in connection with the necessity im-
posed by the omnipotence and fore-knowledge of God. So much
light, so much liberty. When emperor and church appeal to rea-
son there is naturally universal suffrage.

Therefore no one need lose courage, nor believe that labor in the
cause of Progress will be labor wasted. There is no waste in na-
ture, either of Matter, Force, Act, or Thought. A Thought is as
much the end of life as an Action ; and a single Thought sometimes
works greater results than a Revolution, even Revolutions them-
selves. Still there should not be divorce between Thought and
Action. The true Thought is that in which life culminates. But
all wise and true Thought produces Action. It is generative, like
the light ; and light and the deep shadow of the passing cloud are
the gifts of the prophets of the race. Knowledge, laboriously
acquired, and inducing habits of sound Thought, — the reflective
character, — must necessarily be rare. The multitude of laborers
cannot acquire it. Most men attain to a very low standard of it.
It is incompatible with the ordinary and indispensable avocations
of life. A whole world of error as well as of labor, go to make

THE MASTER. 95

one reflective man. In the most advanced nation of Europe there
are more ignorant than wise, more poor than rich, more automatic
laborers, the mere creatures of habit, than reasoning and reflective
men. The proportion is at least a thousand to one. Unanimity
of opinion is so obtained. It only exists among the multitude
who do not think, and the political or spiritual priesthood who
think for that multitude, who think how to guide and govern
them. When men begin to reflect, they begin to differ. The
great problem is to find guides who will not seek to be tyrants.
This is needed even more in respect to the heart than the head.
Now, every man earns his special share of the produce of human
labor, by an incessant scramble, by trickery and deceit. Useful
knowledge, honorably acquired, is too often used after a fashion
not honest or reasonable, so that the studies of youth are far more
noble than the practices of manhood. The labor of the farmer in
his fields, the generous returns of the earth, the benignant and
favoring skies, tend to make him earnest, provident, and grateful ;
the education of the market-place makes him querulous, crafty,
envious, and an intolerable niggard.

Masonry seeks to be this beneficent, unambitious, disinterested
guide ; and it is the very condition of all great structures that the
sound of the hammer and the clink of the trowel should be always
heard in some part of the building. With faith in man, hope for
the future of humanity, loving-kindness for our fellows, Masonry
and the Mason must always work and teach. Let each do that for
which he is best fitted. The teacher also is a workman. Praise-
worthy as the active navigator is, who comes and goes and makes
one clime partake of the treasures of the other, and one to share
the treasures of all, he who keeps the beacon-light upon the hill is
also at his post.

Masonry has already helped cast down some idols from their
pedestals, and grind to impalpable dust some of the links of the
chains that held men's souls in bondage. That there has been
progress needs no other demonstration than that you may now
reason with men, and urge upon them, without danger of the
rack or stake, that no doctrines can be apprehended as truths
if they contradict each other, or contradict other truths given us
by God. Long before the Reformation, a monk, who had found
his way to heresy without the help of Martin Luther, not ventur-
ing to breathe aloud into any living ear his anti-papal and trea-

96 MORALS AND DOGMA.

sonable doctrines, wrote them on parchment, and sealing up the
perilous record, hid it in the massive walls of his monastery.
There was no friend or brother to whom he could intrust his
secret or pour forth his soul. It was some consolation to imagine
that in a future age some one might find the parchment, and the
seed be found not to have been sown in vain. What if the truth
should have to lie dormant as long before germinating as the wheat
in the Egyptian mummy ? Speak it, nevertheless, again and again,
and let it take its chance !

The rose of Jericho grows in the sandy deserts of Arabia and
on the Syrian housetops. Scarcely six inches high, it loses ks
leaves after the flowering season, and dries up into the form of a
ball. Then it is uprooted by the winds, and carried, blown, or
tossed across the desert, into the sea. There, feeling the contact
of the water, it unfolds itself, expands its branches, and expels its
seeds from their seed-vessels. These, when saturated with water,
are carried by the tide and laid on the sea-shore. Many are lost,
as many individual lives of men are useless. But many are thrown
back again from the sea-shore into the desert, where, by the
virtue of the sea-water that they have imbibed, the roots and
leaves sprout and they grow into fruitful plants, which will, in
their turns, like their ancestors, be whirled into the sea. God will
not be less careful to provide for the germination of the truths
you may boldly utter forth. "Cast," He has said, "thy bread upon
the waters, and after many days it shall return to thee again."

Initiation does not change : we find it again and again, and
always the same, through all the ages. The last disciples of Pas-
calis Martinez are still the children of Orpheus; but they adore
the realizer of the antique philosophy, the Incarnate Word of the
Christians.

Pythagoras, the great divulger of the philosophy of numbers,
visited all the sanctuaries of the world. He went into Judaea,
where he procured himself to be circumcised, that he might be
admitted to the secrets of the Kabalah, which the prophets Ezekiel
and Daniel, not without some reservations, communicated to him.
Then, not without some difficulty, he succeeded in being admitted
to the Egyptian initiation, upon the recommendation of King
Amasis. The power of his genius supplied the deficiencies of the
imperfect communications of the Hierophants, and he himself
became a Master and a Revealer.

THE MASTER. 97

Pythagoras defined God : a Living and Absolute Verity clothed
with Light.

He said that the Word was Number manifested by Form.

He made all descend from the Tetractys, that is to say, from the
Quaternary.

God, he said again, is the Supreme Music, the nature of which
is Harmony.

Pythagoras gave the magistrates of Crotona this great religious,
political, and social precept :

"There is no evil that is not preferable to Anarchy."

Pythagoras said, "Even as there are three divine notions and
three intelligible regions, so there is a triple word, for the Hierar-
chical Order always manifests itself by threes. There are the
word simple, the word hieroglyphical, and the word symbolic : in
other terms, there are the word that expresses, the word that con-
ceals, and the word that signifies ; the whole hieratic intelligence
is in the perfect knowledge of these three degrees."

Pythagoras enveloped doctrine with symbols, but carefully
eschewed personifications and images, which, he thought, sooner
or later produced idolatry.

The Holy Kabalah, or tradition of the children of Seth, was car-
ried from Chaldaea by Abraham, taught to the Egyptian priesthood
by Joseph, recovered and purified by Moses, concealed under sym-
bols in the Bible, revealed by the Saviour to Saint John, and con-
tained, entire, under hieratic figures analogous to those of all
antiquity, in the Apocalypse of that Apostle.

The Kabalists consider God as the Intelligent, Animating, Living
Infinite. He is not, for them, either the aggregate of existences,
or existence in the abstract, or a being philosophically definable.
He is in all, distinct from all, and greater than all. His name
even is ineffable ; and yet this name only expresses the human
ideal of His divinity. What God is in Himself, it is not given to
man to comprehend.

God is the absolute of Faith; but the absolute of Reason is
BEING, miT. "/ am that I am" is a wretched translation.

Being, Existence, is by itself, and because it Is. The reason
of Being, is Being itself. We may inquire, "Why does some-
thing exist?" that is, "Why does such or such a thing exist?"
But we cannot, without being absurd, ask, "Why Is Being?"
That would be to suppose Being before Being. If Being had a

9o MORALS AND DOGMA.

CFvUse, that cause would necessarily Be; that is, the cause and
effect would be identical.

Reason and science demonstrate to us that the modes of Exist-
ence and Being balance each other in equilibrium according to
harmonious and hierarchic laws. But a hierarchy is synthetized,
in ascending, and becomes ever more and more monarchical. Yet
the reason cannot pause at a single chief, without being alarmed
at the abysses which it seems to leave above this Supreme Mon-
arch. Therefore it is silent, and gives place to the Faith it adores.

What is certain, even for science and the reason, is, that the
idea of God is the grandest, the most holy, and the most useful of
all the aspirations of man ; that upon this belief morality reposes,
with its eternal sanction. This belief, then, is in humanity, the
most real of the phenomena of being ; and if it were false, nature
would affirm the absurd ; nothingness would give form to life, and
God would at the same time be and not be.

It is to this philosophic and incontestable reality, which is
termed The Idea of God, that the Kabalists give a name. In
this name all others are contained. Its cyphers contain all the
numbers ; and the hieroglyphics of its letters express all the laws
and all the things of nature.

BEING is BEING: the reason of Being is in Being: in the Be-
ginning is the Word, and the Word in logic formulated Speech,
the spoken Reason ; the Word is in God, and is God Himself, mani-
fested to the Intelligence. Here is what is above all the philoso-
phies. This we must believe, under the penalty of never truly
knowing anything, and relapsing into the absurd skepticism of
Pyrrho. The Priesthood, custodian of Faith, wholly rests upon
this basis of knowledge, and it is in its teaching we must recog-
nize the Divine Principle of the Eternal Word.

Light is not Spirit, as the Indian Hierophants believed it to be ;
but only the instrument of the Spirit. It is not the body of the
Protoplastes, as the Theurgists of the school of Alexandria taught,
but the first physical manifestation of the Divine afflatus. God
eternally creates it, and man, in the image of God, modifies and
seems to multiply it.

The high magic is styled "The Sacerdotal Art," and "The
Royal Art." In Egypt, Greece, and Rome, it 'could not but share
the greatnesses and decadences of the Priesthood and of Royalty.
Every philosophy hostile to the national worship and to its myste-

THE MASTER. 99

ries, was of necessity hostile to the great political powers, which
lose their grandeur, if they cease, in the eyes of the multitudes, to
be the images of the Divine Power. Every Crown is shattered,
when it clashes against the Tiara.

Plato, writing to Dionysius the Younger, in regard to the nature
of the First Principle, says : "I must write to you in enigmas, so
that if my letter be intercepted by land or sea, he who shall read
it may in no degree comprehend it." And then he says, "All
things surround their King ; they are, on account of Him, and He
alone is the cause of good things, Second for the Seconds and
Third for the Thirds."

There is in these few words a complete summary of the The-
ology of the Sephiroth. "The King" is AINSOPH, Being Supreme
and Absolute. From this centre, which is everywhere, all things
ray forth ; but we especially conceive of it in three manners and
in three different spheres. In the Divine world (AZILUTH), which
is that of the First Cause, and wherein the whole Eternity of
Things in the beginning existed as Unity, to be afterward, during
Eternity uttered forth, clothed with form, and the attributes that
constitute them matter, the First Principle is Single and First,
and yet not the VERY Illimitable Deity, incomprehensible, undefin-
able ; but Himself in so far as manifested by the Creative Thought.
To compare littleness with infinity, — Arkwright, as inventor of the
spinning- jenny, and not the man Arkwright otherwise and beyond
that. All we can know of the Very God is, compared to His
Wholeness, only as an infinitesimal fraction of a unit, compared
with an infinity of Units.

In the World of Creation, which is that of Second Causes [the
Kabalistic World BRIAH], the Autocracy of the First Principle is
complete, but we conceive of it only as the Cause of the Second
Causes. Here it is manifested by the Binary, and is the Creative
Principle passive. Finally : in the third world, YEZIRAH, or of
Formation, it is revealed in the perfect Form, the Form of Forms,
the World, the Supreme Beauty and Excellence, the Created Per-
fection. Thus the Principle is at once the First, the Second, and
the Third, since it is All in All, the Centre and Cause of all. It
is not the genius of Plato that wre here admire. We recognize only
the exact knowledge of the Initiate.

The great Apostle Saint John did not borrow from the philoso-
phy of Plato the opening of his Gospel. Plato, on the contrary,

IOO MORALS AND DOGMA.

drank at the same springs with Saint John and Philo; and John
in the opening verses of his paraphrase, states the first principles
of a dogma common to many schools, but in language especially
belonging to Philo, whom it is evident he had read. The philoso-
phy of Plato, the greatest of human Revealers, could yearn toward
the Word made man ; the Gospel alone could give him to the world.

Doubt, in presence of Being and its harmonies; skepticism, in
the face of the eternal mathematics and the immutable laws of
Life which make the Divinity present and visible everywhere, as
the Human is known and visible by its utterances of word and
act, — is this not the most foolish of superstitions, and the most
inexcusable as well as the most dangerous of all credulities?
Thought, we know, is. not a result or consequence of the organiza-
tion of matter, of the chemical or other action or reaction of its
particles, like effervescence and gaseous explosions. On the con-
trary, the fact that Thought is manifested and realized in act
human or act divine, proves the existence of an Entity, or Unity,
that thinks. And the Universe is the Infinite Utterance of one of
;.:i infinite number of Infinite Thoughts, which cannot but ema-
nate from an Infinite and Thinking Source. The cause is always
equal, at least, to the effect; and matter cannot think, nor could it
cause itself, or exist without cause, nor could nothing produce
either forces or things ; for in void nothingness no Forces can
inhere. Admit a self-existent Force, and its Intelligence, or am
Intelligent cause of it is admitted, and at once GOD Is.

The Hebrew allegory of the Fall of Man, which is but a special
variation of a universal legend, symbolizes one of the grandest
and most universal allegories of science.

Moral Evil is Falsehood in actions; as Falsehood is Crime in
words.

Injustice is the essence of Falsehood; and every false word is
an injustice.

Injustice is the death of the Moral Being, as Falsehood is the
poison of the Intelligence.

The perception of the Light is the dawn of the Eternal Life, in
Being. The Word of God, which creates the Light, seems to be
uttered by every Intelligence that can take cognizance of Forms
and will look. "Let the Light BE ! The Light, in fact, exists, in
its condition of splendor, for those eyes alone that gaze at it ; and
the Soul, amorous of the spectacle of the beauties of the Universe,

THE MASTER. 1Q1

and applying its attention to that luminous writing of the Infinite
Book, which is called "The Visible," seems to utter, as God did on
the dawn of the first day, that sublime and creative word, "BE!
LIGHT!"

It is not beyond the tomb, but in life itself, that we are to seek
for the mysteries of death. Salvation or reprobation begins here
below, and the terrestrial world too has its Heaven and its Hell.
Always, even here below, virtue is rewarded ; always, even here be-
low, vice is punished ; and that which makes us sometimes, believe
in the impunity of evil-doers is that riches, those instruments of
good and of evil, seem sometimes to be given them at hazard. But
woe to unjust men, when they possess the key of gold ! It opens,
for them, only the gate of the tomb and of Hell.

All the true Initiates have recognized the usefulness of toil and
sorrow. "Sorrow," says a German poet, "is the dog of that un-
known shepherd who guides the flock of men." To learn to suffer,
to learn to die, is the discipline of Eternity, the immortal Novi-
tiate.

The allegorical picture of Cebes, in which the Divine Comedy
of Dante was sketched in Plato's time, the description whereof has
been preserved for us, and which many painters of the middle age
have reproduced by this description, is a monument at once philo-
sophical and magical. It is a most complete moral synthesis, and
at the same time the most audacious demonstration ever given of
the Grand Arcanum, of that secret whose revelation would overturn
Earth and Heaven. Let no one expect us to give them its expla-
nation ! He who passes behind the veil that hides this mystery,
understands that it is in its very nature inexplicable, and that it
is death to those who win it by surprise, as well as to him who
reveals it.

This secret is the Royalty of the Sages, the Crown of the Initi-
ate whom we see redescend victorious from the summit of Trials,
in the fine allegory of Cebes. The Grand Arcanum makes him
master of gold and the light, which are at bottom the same thing,
he has solved the problem of the quadrature of the circle, he di-
rects the perpetual movement, and he possesses the philosophical
stone. Here the Adepts will understand us. There is neither in-
terruption in the toil of nature, nor gap in her work. The Har-
monies of Heaven correspond to those of Earth, and the Eternal
Life accomplishes its evolutions in accordance with the same laws

IO2 MORALS AND DOGMA.

as the life of a dog. "God has arranged all things by weight, num-
ber, and measure," says the Bible ; and tbcs luminous doctrine was
also that of Plato.

Humanity has never really had but one religion and one wor-
ship. This universal light has had its uncertain mirages, its de-
ceitful reflections, and its shadows ; but always, after the nights of
Error, we see it reappear, one and pure like the Sun.

The magnificences of worship are the life of religion, and if
Christ wishes poor ministers, His Sovereign Divinity does not wisji
paltry altars. Some Protestants have not comprehended that wor-
ship is a teaching, and that we must not create in the imagination
of the multitude a mean or miserable God. Those oratories that
resemble poorly-furnished offices or inns, and those worthy minis-
ters clad like notaries or lawyer's clerks, do they not necessarily
cause religion to be regarded as a mere puritanic formality, and
God as a Justice of the Peace ?

We scoff at the Augurs. It is so easy to scoff, and so difficult
well to comprehend. Did the Deity leave the whole world with-
out Light for two score centuries, to illuminate only a little corner
of Palestine and a brutal, ignorant, and ungrateful people? Why
always calumniate God and the Sanctuary? Were there never any
others than rogues among the priests? Could no honest and sin-
cere men be found among the Hierophants of Ceres or Diana, of
Dionusos or Apollo, of Hermes or Mithras? Were these, then, all
deceived, like the rest? Who, then, constantly deceived them,
without betraying themselves, during a series of centuries? — for
the cheats are not immortal ! Arago said, that outside of the pure
mathematics, he who utters the word "impossible," is wanting in
prudence and good sense.

The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh
reversed ; for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God.
The Devil is the personification of Atheism or Idolatry.

For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force, created for
good, but which may serve for evil. It is the instrument of Liberty
or Free Will. They represent this Force, which presides over the
physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the
God PAN ; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the
Ancient Serpent, and the Light-bearer or Phosphor, of which the
poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend. "

Gold, to the eyes of the Initiates, is Light condensed. They

THE MASTER. IO3

style the sacred numbers of the Kabalah "golden numbers," and
the moral teachings of Pythagoras his "golden verses." For the
same reason, a mysterious book of Apuleius,in which an ass figures
largely, was called "The Golden Ass."

The Pagans accused the Christians of worshipping an ass, and
they did not invent this reproach, but it came from the Samaritan
Jews, who, figuring the data of the Kabalah in regard to the Di-
vinity by Egyptian symbols, also represented the Intelligence by
the figure of the Magical Star adored under the name of Rem-
phan, Science under the emblem of Anubis, whose name they
changed to Nibbas, and the vulgar faith or credulity under the
figure of Thartac, a god represented with a boolo, a cloak, and the
head of an ass. According to the Samaritan Doctors, Christianity
was the reign of Thartac, blind Faith and vulgar credulity erected
into a universal oracle, and preferred to Intelligence and Science.

Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, a great Kabalist, but of doubt-
ful orthodoxy, wrote :

"The people will always mock at things easy to be understood ;
it must needs have impostures."

"A Spirit," he said, "that loves wisdom and contemplates the
Truth close at hand, is forced to disguise it, to induce the multi-
tudes to accept it Fictions are necessary to the people, and

the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to
contemplate it in all its brilliance. If the sacerdotal laws allowed
the reservation of judgments and the allegory of words, I would
accept the proposed dignity on condition that I might be a philoso-
pher at home, and abroad a narrator of apologues and parables. . . .
In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude
and sublime wisdom? The truth must be kept secret, and the
masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason."

Moral disorders produce physical ugliness, and in some sort
realize those frightful faces which tradition assigns to the demons.

The first Druids were the true children of the Magi, and their
initiation came from Egypt and Chaldsea, that is to say, from the
pure sources of the primitive Kabalah. They adored the Trinity
under the names of I sis or Hesiis, the Supreme Harmony ; of
Belen or Bel, which in Assyrian means Lord, a name correspond-
ing to that of ADONAI ; and of Camul or Camacl, a name that in
the Kabalah personifies the Divine Justice. Below this triangle ©f
Light they supposed a divine reflection, also composed of three per-

IO4 MORALS AND DOGMA.

sonified rays : first, Teutates or Teuth, the same as the Thoth of
the Egyptians, the Word, or the Intelligence formulated; then
Force and Beauty, whose names varied like their emblems.
Finally, they completed the sacred Septenary by a mysterious
image that represented the progress of the dogma and its future
realizations. This was a young girl veiled, holding a child in her
arms ; and they dedicated this image to "The Virgin who will
become a mother ; — Virgini pariturce."

Hertha or Wertha, the young Isis of Gaul, Queen of Heaven, the
Virgin who was to bear a child, held the spindle of the Fates, filled
with wool half white and half black ; because she presides over
all forms and all«symbols, and weaves the garment of the Ideas.

One of the most mysterious pantacles of the Kabalah, contained
in the Enchiridion of Leo III., represents an equilateral triangle
reversed, inscribed in a double circle. On the triangle are writ-
ten, in such manner as to form the prophetic Tau, the two Hebrew
words so often found appended to the Ineffable Name, En^K and
JTN3S, ALOIIAYIM, or the Powers, and TSABAOTH, or the Starry
Armies and their guiding spirits ; words also which symbolize the
Equilibrium of the Forces of Nature and the Harmony of Num-
bers. To the three sides of the triangle belong the three great
Names mrP, 'JIM, and K^3K, IAHAVEH, ADONAI, and AGLA.
Above the first is written in Latin, Formatio, above the second
Rcformatio, and above the third, Trans formatio. So Creation is
ascribed to the FATHER, Redemption or Reformation to the SONV
and Sanctification or Transformation to the HOLY SPIRIT, answer-
ing unto the mathematical laws of Action, Reaction, and Equilib-
rium. IAHAVEH is also, in effect, the Genesis or Formation of
dogma, by the elementary signification of the four letters of the
Sacred Tetragram ; ADONAI is the realization of this dogma in the
Human Form, in the Visible LORD, who is the Son of God or the
perfect Man ; and AGLA ( formed of the initials of the four words
Ath Gcbur Lauldim Adonai) expresses the synthesis of the whole
dogma and the totality of the Kabalistic science, clearly indicat-
ing by the hieroglyphics of which this admirable name is formed
the Triple Secret of the Great Work.

Masonry, like all the Religions, all the Mysteries, Hermeticism
and Alchemy, conceals its secrets from all except the Adepts and
Sages, or the Elect, and uses false explanations and misinterpreta-
tions of its symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be mis-

THE MASTER. IO5

led ; to conceal the Truth, which it calls Light, from them, and to
draw them away from it. Truth is not for those who are unworthy
or unable to receive it, or would pervert it. So God Himself inca-
pacitates many men, by color-blindness, to distinguish colors, and
leads the masses away from the highest Truth, giving them the
power to attain only so much of it as it is profitable to them to
know. Every age has had a reli'gion suited to its capacity.

The Teachers, even of Christianity, are, in general, the most
ignorant of the true meaning of that which they teach. There is
no book of which so little is known as the Bible. To most who
read it, it is as incomprehensible as the Sohar.

So Masonry jealously conceals its secrets, and intentionally leads
conceited interpreters astray. There is no sight under the sun
more pitiful and ludicrous at once, than the spectacle of the Pres-
tons and the Webbs, not to mention the later incarnations of Dull-
ness and Commonplace, undertaking to "explain" the old symbols
of Masonry, and adding to and "improving" them, or inventing
new ones.

To the Circle inclosing the central point, and itself traced be-
tween two parallel lines, a figure purely Kabalistic, these persons
have added the superimposed Bible, and even reared on that the
ladder with three or nine rounds, and then given a vapid inter-
pretation of the whole, so profoundly absurd as actually to excite
admiration.
8

IV.

SECRET MASTER.

MASONRY is a succession of allegories, the mere vehicles of great
lessons in morality and philosophy. You will more fully appreciate
its spirit, its object, its purposes, as you advance in the different
Degrees, which you will find to constitute a great, complete, and
harmonious system.

If you have been disappointed in the first three Degrees, ay you
have received them, and if it has seemed to you that the performance
has not come up to the promise, that the lessons of morality are
not new, and the scientific instruction is but rudimentary, and the
symbols are imperfectly explained, remember that the ceremonies
and lessons of those Degrees have been for ages more and more
accommodating themselves, by curtailment and sinking into com-
monplace, to the often limited memory and capacity of the Master
and Instructor, and to the intellect and needs of the Pupil and
Initiate ; that they have come to us from an age when symbols
were used, not to reveal but to conceal; when the commonest learn-
ing was confined to a select few, and the simplest principles of
morality seemed newly discovered truths ; and that these antique
and simple Degrees now stand like the broken columns of a roof-
less Druidic temple, in their rude and mutilated greatness ; in
many parts, also, corrupted by time, and disfigured by modern ad-
ditions and absurd interpretations. They are but the entrance to
the great Masonic Temple, the triple columns of the portico.

You have taken the first step over its threshold, the first step
toward the inner sanctuary and heart of the temple. You are in
the path that leads up the slope of the mountain of Truth; and
106

SECRET MASTER. IO/

it depends upon your secrecy, obedience, and fidelity, whether you
will advance or remain stationary.

Imagine not that you will become indeed a Mason by learning
what is commonly called the "work," or even by becoming familiar
with ©ur traditions. Masonry has a history, a literature, a philoso-
phy. Its allegories and traditions will teach you much ; but much
is to be sought elsewhere. The streams of learning that now flow
full and broad must be followed to their heads in the springs that
well up in the remote past, and you will there find the origin and
meaning of Masonry.

A few rudimentary lessons in architecture, a few universally
admitted maxims of morality, a few unimportant traditions, whose
real meaning is unknown or misunderstood, will no longer satisfy
the earnest inquirer after Masonic truth. Let whoso is content
with these, seek to climb no higher. He who desires to understand
the harmonious and beautiful proportions of Freemasonry must
read, study, reflect, digest, and discriminate. The true Mason is an
ardent seeker after knowledge ; and he knows that both books and
the antique symbols of Masonry are vessels which come down to
us full-freighted with the intellectual riches of the Past ; and that
in the lading of these argosies is much that sheds light on the
history of Masonry, and proves its claim to be acknowledged the
benefactor of mankind, born in the very cradle of the race.

Knowledge is the most genuine and real of human treasures;
for it is Light, as Ignorance is Darkness. It is the development of
the human soul, and its acquisition the gro^vt\} of the soul, which
at the birth of man knows nothing, and therefore, in one sense,
may be said to be nothing. It is the seed, which has in it the
power to grow, to acquire, and by acquiring to be developed, as the
seed is developed into the shoot, the plant, the tree. "We need not
pause at the common argument that by learning man excelleth
man, in that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by learning man
ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where in body he can-
not come, and the like. Let us rather regard the dignity and
excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's
nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or continuance.
For to this tendeth generation, and raising of Houses and Fami-
lies ; to this buildings, foundations, and monuments ; to this tend-
eth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect the
strength of all other human desires." That our influences shall

1O8 MORALS AND DOGMA.

survive us, and be living forces when we are in our graves ; and not
merely that our names shall be remembered ; but rather that our
works shall be read, our acts spoken of, our names recollected and
mentioned when we are dead, as evidences that those influences live
and rule, sway and control some portion of mankind and of the
world, — this is the aspiration of the human soul. "We see then how
far the monuments of genius and learning are more durable than
monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of
Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the
loss of a syllable or letter, during which time infinite palaces, tem-
ples, castles, cities, have decayed and been demolished? It is not
possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander,
Caesar, no, nor of the Kings or great personages of much later
years ; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose
of the life and truth. But the images of men's genius and knowl-
edge remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and
capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called
images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the
minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opin-
ions in succeeding ages ; so that if the invention of the ship was
thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place
to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation
of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which,
as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so dis-
tant to participate of the wisdom, illumination, and inventions,
the one of the other."

To learn, to attain knowledge, to be wise, is a necessity for every
truly noble soul ; to teach, to communicate that knowledge, to
share that wisdom with others, and not churlishly to lock up his
exchequer, and place a sentinel at the door to drive away the
needy, is equally an impulse of a noble nature, and the worthiest
work of man.

"There was a little city," says the Preacher, the son of David,
"and few men within it; and there came a great King against it
and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there
was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered
the city ; yet no man remembered that same poor man. Then,
said I, wisdom is better than strength : nevertheless, the poor man's
wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard." If it should
chance to you, my brother, to do mankind good service, and be

SECRET MASTEB. 1 CX)

rewarded with indifference and forgetfulness only, still be not dis-
couraged, but remember the further advice of the wise King.
"In the morning sow the seed, and in the evening withhold not thy
hand ; for thou knowest not which shall prosper, this or that, or
whether both shall be alike good." Sow you the seed, whoever
reaps. Learn, that you may be enabled to do good ; and do so be-
cause it is right, finding in the act itself ample reward and recom-
pense.

To attain the truth, and to serve our fellows, our country, and
mankind — this is the noblest destiny of man. Hereafter and all
your life it is to be your object. If you desire to ascend to that
destiny, advance! If you have other and less noble objects, and
are contented with a lower flight, halt here! let others scale
the heights, and Masonry fulfill her mission.

If you will advance, gird up your loins for the struggle ! for the
way is long and toilsome. Pleasure, all smiles, will beckon you
on the one hand, and Indolence will invite you to sleep among the
flowers, upon the other. Prepare, by secrecy, obedience, and fidelity,
to resist the allurements of both !

Secrecy is indispensable in a Mason of whatever Degree. It is
the first and almost the only lesson taught to the Entered Ap-
prentice. The obligations which we have each assumed toward
every Mason that lives, requiring of us the performance of the
most serious and onerous duties toward those personally unknown
to us until they demand our aid, — duties that must be performed,
even at the risk of life, or our solemn oaths be broken and violated,
and we be branded as false Masons and faithless men, teach us
how profound a folly it would be to betray our secrets to those
who, bound to us by no tie of common obligation, might, by ob-
taining them, call on us in their extremity, when the urgency of
the occasion should allow us no time for inquiry, and the peremp-
tory mandate of our obligation compel us to do a brother's duty
to a base impostor.

The secrets of our brother, when communicated to us, must be
sacred, if they be such as the law of our country warrants us to
keep. We are required to keep none other, when the law that we
are called on to obey is indeed a law, by having emanated from
the only source of power, the People. Edicts which emanate from
the mere arbitrary will of a despotic power, contrary to the law of
God or the Great Law of Nature, destructive of the inherent rights

1 IO MORALS A.N'J DOGMA.

of man, violative of the right of free thought, free speech, free
conscience, it is lawful to rebel against and strive to abrogate.

For obedience to the Law does not mean submission to tyranny ;
nor that, by a profligate sacrifice of every noble feeling, we shotricl
offer to despotism the homage of adulation. As every new victim
falls, we may lift our voice in still louder flattery. We may fall at
the proud feet, we may beg, as a boon, the honor of kissing that
bloody hand which has been lifted against the helpless. We may
do more : we may bring the altar and the sacrifice, and implore
the God not to ascend too soon to Heaven. This we may do, for
this we have the sad remembrance that beings of a human form
and soul have done. But this is all we can do. We can constrain
our tongues to be false, our features to bend themselves to the
semblance of that passionate adoration which we wish to express,
our knees to fall prostrate ; but our heart we cannot constrain.
There virtue must still have a voice which is not to be drowned
by hymns and acclamations ; there the crimes which we laud as
virtues, are crimes still, and he whom we have made a God is the
most contemptible of mankind ; if, indeed, we do not feel, per-
haps, that we are ourselves still more contemptible.

But that law which is the fair expression of the will and judg-
ment of the people, is the enactment of the whole and of every
individual. Consistent with the law of God and the great law of
nature, consistent with pure and abstract right as tempered by
necessity and the general interest, as contra-distinguished from
the private interest of individuals, it is obligatory upon all, because
it is the work of all, the will of all, the solemn judgment of all,
from which there is no appeal.

In this Degree, my brother, you are especially to learn the duty
of obedience to that law. There is one true and original law,
conformable to reason and to nature, diffused over all, invariable,
eternal, which calls to the fulfillment of duty, and to abstinence
from injustice, and calls with that irresistible voice which is felt
in all its authority wherever it is heard. This law cannot be
abrogated or diminished, or its sanctions affected, by any law of
man. A whole senate, a whole people, cannot dispense from its
paramount obligation. It requires no commentator to render it
distinctly intelligible: nor is it one thing at Rome, another at
Athens, one thing now, and another in the ages to come; but in
all times and in all nations, it is, and has been, and will be, one

SECRET MASTER. Ill

and everlasting; — one as that God, its great Author and Promul-
gator, who is the Common Sovereign of all mankind, is Himself
One. No man can disobey it without flying, as it were, from his
own bosom, and repudiating his nature ; and in this very act he
will inflict on himself the severest of retributions, even though he
escape what is regarded as punishment.

It is our duty to obey the laws of our country, and to be careful
that prejudice or passion, fancy or affection, error and illusion, be
not mistaken for conscience. Nothing is more usual than to pre-
tend conscience in all the actions of man which are public and
cannot be concealed. The disobedient refuse to submit to the
laws, and they also in many cases pretend conscience ; and so dis-
obedience and rebellion become conscience, in which there is
neither knowledge nor revelation, nor truth nor charity, nor
reason nor religion. Conscience is tied to laws. Right or sure
conscience is right reason reduced to practice, and conducting
moral actions, while perverse conscience is seated in the fancy or
affections — a heap of irregular principles and irregular defects —
and is the same in conscience as deformity is in the body, or
peevishness in the affections. It is not enough that the conscience
be taught by nature ; but it must be taught by God, conducted
by reason, made operative by discourse, assisted by choice, in-
structed by laws and sober principles ; and then it is right, and it
may be sure. All the general measures of justice, are the laws of
God, and therefore they constitute the general rules of government
for the conscience ; but necessity also hath a large voice in the
arrangement of human affairs, and the disposal of human rela-
tions, and the dispositions of human laws ; and these general
measures, like a great river into little streams, are deduced into
little rivulets and particularities, by the laws and customs, by the
sentences and agreements of men, and by the absolute despotism
of necessity, that will not allow perfect and abstract justice and
equity to be the sole rule of civil government in an imperfect
world ; and that must needs be law which is for the greatest good
of the greatest number.

When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it. It is
better thou shouldest not vow than thou shouldest vow and
not pay. Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be
hasty to utter anything before God : for God is in Heaven, and
thou art upon earth ; therefore let thy words be few. Weigh well

112 MORALS AND DOGMA.

what it is you promise; but once the promise and pledge are'given
remember that he who is false to his obligation will be false to his
family, his friend, his country, and his God.

Fides servanda est: Faith plighted is ever to be kept, was a
maxim and an axiom even among pagans. The virtuous Roman
said, either let not that which seems expedient be base, or if it be
base, let it not seem expedient. What is there which that so-called
expediency can bring, so valuable as that which it takes away, if
it deprives you of the name of a good man and robs you of your in-
tegrity and honor ? In all ages, he who violates his plighted word
has been held unspeakably base. The word of a Mason, like the
word of a knight in the times of chivalry, once given must be sa-
cred ; and the judgment of his brothers, upon him who violates his
pledge, should be stern as the judgments of the Roman Censors
against him who violated his oath. Good faith is revered among
Masons as it was among the Romans, who placed its statue in the
capitol, next to that of Jupiter Maximus Optimus; and we, like
them, hold that calamity should always be chosen rather than base-
ness ; and with the knights of old, that one should always die
rather than be dishonored.

Be faithful, therefore, to the promises you make, to the pledges
you give, and to the vows that you assume, since to break either
is base and dishonorable.

Be faithful to your family, and perform all the duties of a good
father, a good son, a good husband, and a good brother.

Be faithful to your friends ; for true friendship is of a nature
not only to survive through all the vicissitudes of life, but to con-
tinue through an endless duration ; not only to stand the shock of
conflicting opinions, and the roar of a revolution that shakes the
world, but to last when the heavens are no more, and to spring
fresh from the ruins of the universe.

Be faithful to your country, and prefer its dignity and honor
to any degree of popularity and honor for yourself ; consulting its
interest rather than your own, and rather than the pleasure and
gratification of the people, which are often at variance with their
welfare.

Be faithful to Masonry, which is to be faithful to the best inter-
ests of mankind. Labor, by precept and example, to elevate the
standard of Masonic character, to enlarge its sphefe of influence,
to popularize its teachings, and to make all men know it for the

SECRET MASTER. 113

Great Apostle of Peace, Harmony, and Good-will on earth among
men : of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

Masonry is useful to all men : to the learned, because it affords
them the opportunity of exercising their talents upon subjects em-
inently worthy of their attention ; to the illiterate, because it offers
them important instruction ; to the young, because it presents
them with salutary precepts and good examples, and accustoms
them to reflect on the proper mode of living; to the man of the
world, whom it furnishes with noble and useful recreation ; to the
traveller, whom it enables to find friends and brothers in countries
where else he would be isolated and solitary ; to the worthy man
in misfortune, to \vhom it gives assistance ; to the afflicted, on
whom it lavishes consolation ; to the charitable man, whom it en-
ables to do more good, by uniting with those who are charitable
like himself ; and to all who have souls capable of appreciating its
importance, and of enjoying the charms of a friendship founded
on the same principles of religion, morality, and philanthropy.

A Freemason, therefore, should be a man of honor and of con-
science, preferring his duty to everything beside, even to his life ;
independent in his opinions, and of good morals ; submissive to
the laws, devoted to humanity, to his country, to his family ; kind
and indulgent to his brethren, friend of all virtuous men, and
ready to assist his fellows by all means in his power.

Thus will you be faithful to yourself, to your fellows, and to
God, and thus will you do honor to the name and rank of SECRET
MASTER ; which, like other Masonic honors, degrades if it is not
deserved.

V.
PERFECT MASTER.

THE Master Khurum was an industrious and an honest man.
What lie was employed to do he did diligently, and he did it well
and faithfully. He received no zvages that were not his due. In-
dustry and honesty are the virtues peculiarly inculcated in this
Degree. They are common and homely virtues ; but not for that
beneath our notice. As the bees do not love or respect the drones,
so Masonry neither loves nor respects the idle and those who live
by their wits ; and least of all those parasitic acari that live upon
themselves. For those who are indolent are likely to become dis-
sipated and vicious ; and perfect honesty, which ought to be the
common qualification of all, is more rare than diamonds. To do
earnestly and steadily, and to do faithfully and honestly that which
we have to do — perhaps this wants but little, when looked at from
every point of view, of including the whole body of the moral
law ; and even in their commonest and homeliest application, these
virtues belong to the character of a Perfect Master.

Idleness is the burial of a living man. For an idle person is so
useless to any purposes of God and man, that he is like one who
is dead, unconcerned in the changes and necessities of the world ;
and he only lives to spend his time, and eat the fruits of the earth.
Like a vermin or a wolf, when his time comes, he dies and per-
ishes, and in the mean time is nought. He neither ploughs nor
carries burdens : all that he does is either unprofitable or mis-
chievous.

It is a vast work that any man may do, if he never be idle : and
it is a huge way that a man may go in virtue, if^he never go out
of his way by a vicious habit or a great crime : and he who per-
114

PERFECT MASTER. 115

fetually reads good books, if his parts be answerable, will have a
huge stock of knowledge.

St. Ambrose, and from his example, St. Augustine, divided every
day into these tcrtias of employment: eight hours they spent in
the necessities of nature and recreation : eight hours in charity,
in doing assistance to others, dispatching their business, reconcil-
ing their enmities, reproving their vices, correcting their errors,
instructing their ignorance, and in transacting the affairs of their
dioceses ; and the other eight hours they spent in study and
prayer.

We think, at the age of twenty, that life is much too long for
that which we have to learn and do ; and that there is an almost
fabulous distance between our age and that of our grandfather.
But when, at the age of sixty, if we are fortunate enough to reach
it, or unfortunate enough, as the case may be, and according as we
have profitably invested or wasted our time, we halt, and look back
along the way we have come, and cast up and endeavor to balance
our accounts with time and opportunity, we find that we have
made life much too short, and thrown away a huge portion of our
time. Then we, in our mind, deduct from the sum total of our
years the hours that we have needlessly passed in sleep ; the work-
ing-hours each day, during which the surface of the mind's slug-
gish pool has not been stirred or ruffled by a single thought; the
days that we have gladly got rid of, to attain some real or fancied
object that lay beyond, in the way between us and which stood
irksomely the intervening days ; the hours worse than wasted in
follies and dissipation, or misspent in useless and unprofitable
studies ; and we acknowledge, with a sigh, that we could have
learned and done, in half a score of years well spent, more than
we have done in all our forty years of manhood.

To learn and to do ! — this is the soul's work here below. The
soul grows as truly as an oak grows. As the tree takes the carbon
of the air, the dew, the rain, and the light, and the food that the
earth supplies to its roots, and by its mysterious chemistry trans-
mutes them into sap and fibre, into wood and leaf, and flower and
fruit, and color and perfume, so the soul imbibes knowledge, and
by a divine alchemy changes what it learns into its own substance,
and grows from within outwardly with an inherent force and
power like those that lie hidden in the grain of wheat.

The soul hath its senses, like the body, that may be cultivated,

HO MORALS AND DOGMA.

enlarged, refined, as itself grows in stature and proportion ; and
he who cannot appreciate a fine painting or s-tatue, a noble poem,
a sweet harmony, a heroic thought, or a disinterested action, or to
whom the wisdom of philosophy is but foolishness and babble, and
the loftiest truths of less importance than the price of stocks or
cotton, or the elevation of baseness to office, merely lives on the
level of commonplace, and fitly prides himself upon that inferiority
of the soul's senses, which is the inferiority and imperfect develop-
ment of the soul itself.

To sleep little, and to study much; to say little, and to hear
and think much ; to learn, that we may be able to do, and then to
do, earnestly and vigorously, whatever may be required of us by
duty, and by the good of our fellows, our country, and mankind, —
these are the duties of every Mason who desires to imitate the
Master Khurum.

The duty of a Mason as an honest man is plain and easy. It
requires of us honesty in contracts, sincerity in affirming, sim-
plicity in bargaining, and faithfulness in performing. Lie not at
all, neither in a little thing nor in a great, neither in the substance
nor in the circumstance, neither in word nor deed : that is, pre-
tend not what is false ; cover not what is true ; and let the measure
of your affirmation or denial be the understanding of your con-
tractor ; for he who deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking
what is true, in a sense not intended or understood by the other,
is a liar and a thief. A Perfect Master must avoid that which
deceives, equally with that which is false.

Let your prices be according to that measure of good and evil
which is established in the fame and common accounts of the
wisest and most merciful men, skilled in that manufacture or
commodity ; and the gain such, which, without scandal, is allowed
to persons in all the same circumstances.

In intercourse with others, do not do all which thou mayest
lawfully do ; but keep something within thy power ; and, because
there is a latitude of gain in buying and selling, take not thou the
utmost penny that is lawful, or which thou thinkest so ; for
although it be lawful, yet it is not safe ; and he who gains all that
he can gain lawfully, this year, will possibly be tempted, next
year, to gain something unlawfully.

Let no man, for his own poverty, become more oppressing and
cruel in his bargain ; but quietly, modestly, diligently, and patiently

PERFECT MASTER. 117

recommend his estate to God, and follow its interest, and leave the
success to Him.

Detain not the wages of the hireling ; for every degree of deten-
tion of it beyond the time, is injustice and uncharitableness, and
grinds his face till tears and blood come out ; but pay him exactly
according to covenant, or according to his needs.

Religiously keep all promises and covenants, though made to
your disadvantage, though afterward you perceive you might have
done better; and let not any precedent act of yours be altered by
any after-accident. Let nothing make you break your promise,
unless it be unlawful or impossible ; that is, either out of your
nature or out of your civil power, yourself being under the power
of another ; or that it be intolerably inconvenient to yourself, and
of no advantage to another; or that you have leave expressed or
reasonably presumed.

Let no man take wages or fees for a work that he cannot do,
or cannot with probability undertake ; or in some sense profitably,
arid with ease, or with advantage manage. Let no man appropriate
to his own use, what God, by a special mercy, or the Republic,
hath made common ; for that is against both Justice and Charity.

That any man should be the worse for us, and for our direct
act, and by our intention, is against the rule of equity, of justice,
and of charity. We then do not that to others, which we would
have done to ourselves ; for we grow richer upon the ruins of their
fortune.

It is not honest to receive anything from another without re-
turning him an equivalent therefor. The gamester who wins the
money of another is dishonest. There should be no such thing as
bets and gaming among Masons : for no honest man should desire
that for nothing which belongs to another. The merchant who
sells an inferior article for a sound price, the speculator who
makes the distresses and needs of others fill his exchequer are
neither fair nor honest, but base, ignoble, unfit for immortality.

It should be the earnest desire of every Perfect Master so to live
and deal and act, that when it comes to him to die, he may be
able to say, and his conscience to adjudge, that no man on earth
is poorer, because he is richer : that what he hath he has honestly
earned, and no man can go before God, and claim that by the
rules of equity administered in His great chancery, this house in
which we die, this land we devise to our heirs, this money that

Il8 MORALS AND DOGMA.

enriches those who survive to bear our name, is his and not ours,
and we in that forum are only his trustee. For it is most certain
that God is just, and will sternly enforce every such trust; and
that to all whom we despoil, to all whom we defraud, to all from
whom we take or win anything whatever, without fair considera-
tion and equivalent, He will decree a full and adequate compensa-
tion.

Be careful, then, that thou receive no wages, here or elsewhere,
that are not thy due ! For if thou dost, thou wrongest some one,
by taking that which in God's chancery belongs to him ; and
whether that which thou takest thus be wealth, or rank, or
influence, or reputation or affection, thou wilt surely be held to
make full satisfaction.

VI.

INTIMATE SECRETARY.

[Confidential Secretary.]

You are especially taught in this Degree to be zealous and faith-
ful ; to be disinterested and benevolent ; and to act the peace-
maker, in case of dissensions, disputes, and quarrels among the
brethren.

Duty is the moral magnetism which controls and guides the
true Mason's course over the tumultuous seas of life. Whether the
stars of honor, reputation, and reward do or do not shine, in the
light of day or in the darkness of the night of trouble and adver-
sity, in calm or storm, that unerring magnet still shows him the
true course to steer, and indicates with certainty where-away lies
the port which not to reach involves shipwreck and dishonor. He
follows its silent bidding, as the mariner, when land is for many
days not in sight, and the ocean without path or landmark spreads
out all around him, follows the bidding of the needle, never
doubting that it points truly to the north. To perform that
duty, whether the performance be rewarded or unrewarded, is his
sole care. And it doth not matter, though of this performance
there may be no witnesses, and though what he does will be for-
ever unknown to all mankind.

A little consideration will teach us that Fame has other limits
than mountains and oceans ; and that he who places happiness in
the frequent repetition of his name, may spend his life in propa-
gating it, without any danger of weeping for new worlds, or neces-
sity of passing the Atlantic sea.

If, therefore, he who imagines the world to be filled with his ac-

119

I2O MORALS AND DOGMA.

tions and praises, shall subduct from the number of his encomiasts
all those who are placed below the flight of fame, and who hear in
the valley of life no voice but that of necessity ; all those who im-
agine themselves too important to regard him, and consider the
mention of his name as a usurpation of their time ; all who are too
much or too little pleased with themselves to attend to anything
external ; all who are attracted by pleasure, or chained down by
pain to unvaried ideas; all who are withheld from attending his
triumph by different pursuits ; and all who slumber in universal
negligence; he will find his renown straitened by nearer bounds
than the rocks of Caucasus ; and perceive that no man can be ven-
erable or formidable, but to a small part of his fellow-creatures.
And therefore, that we may not languish in our endeavors after
excellence, it is necessary that, as Africanus counsels his decend-
ants, we raise our eyes to higher prospects, and contemplate our
future and eternal state, without giving up our hearts to the praise
of crowds, or fixing our hopes on such rewards as human powe-r
can bestow.

We are not born for ourselves alone ; and our country claims her
share, and our friends their share of us. As all that the earth pro-
duces is created for the use of man, so men are created for the
sake of men, that they may mutually do good to one another. In
this we ought to take nature for our guide, and throw into the pub-
lic stock the offices of general utility, by a reciprocation of duties ;
sometimes by receiving, sometimes by giving, and sometimes to
cement human society by arts, by industry, and by our resources.

Suffer others to be praised in thy presence, and entertain their
good and glory with delight; but at no hand disparage them, or
lessen the report, or make an objection; and think not the ad-
vancement of thy brother is a lessening of thy worth. Upbraid
no man's weakness to him to discomfit him, neither report it to
disparage him, neither delight to remember it to lessen him, or to
set thyself above him ; nor ever praise thyself or dispraise any man
else, unless some sufficient worthy end do hallow it.

Remember that we usually disparage others upon slight grounds
and little instances ; and if a man be highly commended, we think
him sufficiently lessened, if we can but charge' one sin of folly or
inferiority in his account. We should either be more severe to our-
selves, or less so to others, and consider that whatsoever good any
one can think or say of us, we can tell him of many unworthy and

INTIMATE SECRETARY. 121

foolish and perhaps worse actions of ours, any one ol which, done
by another, would be enough, with us, to destroy his reputa-
tion.

If we think the people wise and sagacious, and just and appre-
ciative, when they praise and make idols of us, let us not call
them unlearned and ignorant, and ill and stupid judges, when
our neighbor is cried up by public fame and popular noises.

Every man hath in his own life sins enough, in his own mind
trouble enough, in his own fortunes evil enough, and in perform-
ance of his offices failings more than enough, to entertain his
own inquiry ; so that curiosity after the affairs of others cannot be
without envy and an ill mind. The generous man will be solicit-
ous and inquisitive into the beauty and order of a well-governed
family, and after the virtues of an excellent person ; but anything
for which men keep locks and bars, or that blushes to see the light,
or that is either shameful in manner or private in nature, this
thing will not be his care and business.

It should be objection sufficient to exclude any man from the
society of Masons, that he is not disinterested and generous, both
in his acts, and in his opinions of men, and his constructions of
their conduct. He who is selfish and grasping, or censorious
and ungenerous, will not long remain within the strict limits
of honesty and truth, but will shortly commit injustice. He who
loves himself too much must needs love others too little ; and he
who habitually gives harsh judgment will not long delay to give
unjust judgment.

The generous man is not careful to return no more than he re-
ceives ; but prefers that the balances upon the ledgers of benefits
shall be in his favor. He who hath received pay in full for all
the benefits and favors that he has conferred, is like a spendthrift
who has consumed his whole estate, and laments over an empty
exchequer. He who requites my favors with ingratitude adds
to, instead of diminishing, my wealth ; and he who cannot return
a favor is equally poor, whether his inability arises from poverty
of spirit, sordidness of soul, or pecuniary indigence.

If he is wealthy who hath large sums invested, and the mass of
whose fortune consists in obligations that bind other men to pay
him money, he is still more so to whom many owe large returns of
kindnesses and favors. Beyond a moderate sum each year, the
wealthy man merely invests his means : and that which he never

\22 MORALS AND DOGMA.

uses is still like favors unreturned and kindnesses unreciprocated,
an actual and real portion of his fortune.

Generosity and a liberal spirit make men to be humane and ge-
nial, open-hearted, frank, and sincere, earnest to do good, easy and
contented, and well-wishers of manidnd. They protect the feeble
against the strong, and the defenceless against rapacity and craft.
They succor and comfort the poor, and are the guardians, under
God, of his innocent and helpless wards. They value friends more
than riches or fame, and gratitude more than money or power.
They are noble by God's patent, and their escutcheons and quar-
terings are to be found in heaven's great book of heraldry. Nor can
any man any more be a Mason than he can be a gentleman, unless
he is generous, liberal, and disinterested. To be liberal, but only
of that which is our own ; to be generous, but only when we have
first been just; to give, when to give deprives us of a luxury or a
comfort, this is Masonry indeed.

He who is worldly, covetous, or sensual must change before he
can be a good Mason. If we are governed by inclination and not
by duty ; if we are unkind, severe, censorious, or injurious, in the
relations or intercourse of life ; if we are unfaithful parents or un-
dutiful children ; if we are harsh masters or faithless servants ; if
we are treacherous friends or bad neighbors or bitter competitors
or corrupt unprincipled politicians or overreaching dealers, in bus-
iness, we are wandering at a great distance from the true Masonic
light.

Masons must be kind and affectionate one to another. Fre-
quenting the same temples, kneeling at the same altars, they should
feel that respect and that kindness for each other, which their com-
mon relation and common approach to one God should inspire.
There needs to be much more of the spirit of the ancient fellowship
among us ; more tenderness for each other's faults, more forgive-
ness, more solicitude for each other's improvement and good for-
tune ; somewhat of brotherly feeling, that it be not shame to use
the word "brother."

Nothing should be allowed to interfere with that kindness and
affection : neither the spirit of business, absorbing, eager, and
overreaching, ungenerous and hard in its dealings, keen and bitter
in its competitions, low and sordid in its purposes ; nor that of
ambition, selfish, mercenary, restless, circumventing, living only
in the opinion of others, envious of the good fortune of others,

INTIMATE SECRETARY. 123

miserably vain of its own success, unjust, unscrupulous, and
slanderous.

He that does me a favor, hath bound me to make him a return
of thankfulness. The obligation comes not by covenant, nor by
his own express intention ; but by the nature of the thing ; and
is a duty springing up within the spirit of the obliged person, to
whom it is more natural to love his friend, and to do good for
good, than to return evil for evil ; because a man may forgive an
injury, but he must never forget a good turn. He that refuses to
do good to them whom he is bound to love, or to love that which
did him good, is unnatural and monstrous in his affections, and
thinks all the world born to minister to him ; with a greediness
worse than that of the sea, which, although it receives all rivers
into itself, yet it furnishes the clouds and springs with a return of
all they need. Our duty to those who are our benefactors is, to
esteem and love their persons, to make them proportionable re-
turns of service, or duty, or profit, according as we can, or as they
need, or as opportunity presents itself ; and according to the great-
ness of their kindnesses.

The generous man cannot but regret to see dissensions and dis-
putes among his brethren. Only the base and ungenerous delight
in discord. It is the poorest occupation of humanity to labor to
make men think worse of each other, as the press, and too com-
monly the pulpit, changing places with the hustingsand the tribune,
do. The duty of the Mason is to endeavor to make man think
better of his neighbor ; to quiet, instead of aggravating difficul-
ties, to bring together those who are severed or estranged ; to keep
friends from becoming foes, and to persuade foes to become
friends. To do this, he must needs control his own passions, and
bt not rash and hasty, nor swift to take offence, nor easy to be an-
gered.

For anger is a professed enemy to counsel. It is a direct storm,
in which no man can be heard to speak or call from without ; for
if you counsel gently, you are disregarded ; if you urge it and be
vehement, you provoke it more. It is neither manly nor ingenu-
ous. It makes marriage to be a necessary .and unavoidable trouble ;
friendships and societies and familiarities, to be intolerable. It
multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine
to run into madness. It makes innocent jesting to be the begin-
ning of tragedies. It turns friendship into hatred ; it makes a

124 MORALS AND DOGMA.

man lose himself, and his reason and his argument, in disputation.
It turns the desires of knowledge into an itch of wrangling. It
adds insolency to power. It turns justice into cruelty, and judg-
ment into oppression. It changes discipline into tediousness and
hatred of liberal institution. It makes a prosperous man to be en-
vied, and the unfortunate to be unpitied.

See, therefore, that first controlling your own temper, and gov-
erning your own passions, you fit yourself to keep peace and har-
mony among other men, and especially the brethren. Above all
remember that Masonry is the realm of peace, and that "among
Masons there must be no dissension, but only that noble emulation,
which can best ivork and best agree." Wherever there is strife and
hatred among the brethren, there is no Masonry ; for Masonry is
Peace, and Brotherly Love, and Concord.

Masonry is the great Peace Society of the world. Wherever it
exists, it struggles to prevent international difficulties and dis-
putes ; and to bind Republics, Kingdoms, and Empires together
in one great band of peace and amity. It would not so often
struggle in vain, if Masons knew their power and valued their
oaths.

Who can sum up the horrors and woes accumulated in a single
war? Masonry is not dazzled with all its pomp and circumstance,
all its glitter and glory. War comes with its bloody hand into our
very dwellings. It takes from ten thousand homes those who lived
there in peace and comfort, held by the tender ties of family and
kindred. It drags them away, to die untended, of fever or expo-
sure, in infectious climes; or to be hacked, torn, and mangled in
the fierce fight ; to fall on the gory field, to rise no more, or to be
borne away, in awful agony, to noisome and horrid hospitals. The
groans of the battle-field are echoed in sighs of bereavement from
thousands of desolated hearths. There is a skeleton in every
house, a vacant chair at every table. Returning, the soldier brings
worse sorrow to his home, by the infection which he has caught, of
camp-vices. The country is demoralized. The national mind is
brought down, from the noble interchange of kind offices with
another people, to wrath and revenge, and base pride, and the habit
of measuring brute strength against brute strength, in battle.
Treasures are expended, that would suffice to build ten thousand
churches, hospitals, and universities, or rib and tie together a con-
tinent with rails of iron. If that treasure were sunk in the sea, it

INTIMATE SECRETARY. 125

would be calamity enough ; but it is put to worse use ; for it is ex-
pended in cutting into the veins and arteries of human life, until
the earth is deluged with a sea of blood.

Such are the lessons of this Degree. You have vowed to make
them the rule, the law, and the guide of your life and conduct.
If you do so, you will be entitled, because fitted, to advance in
Masonry. If you do not, you have already gone too far.

ffi it

a

VII.
PROVOST AND JUDGE.

THE lesson which this Degree inculcates is JUSTICE, in decision
and judgment, and in our intercourse and dealing with other men.

In a country where trial by jury is known, every intelligent man
is liable to be called on to act as a judge, either of fact alone, or of
fact and law mingled ; and to assume the heavy responsibilities
which belong to that character.

Those who are invested with the power of judgment should
judge the causes of all persons uprightly and impartially, without
any personal consideration of the power of the mighty, or the
bribe of the rich, or the needs of the poor. That is the cardinal
rule, which no one will dispute ; though many fail to observe it.
But they must do more. They must divest themselves of preju-
dice and preconception. They must hear patiently, remember
accurately, and weigh carefully the facts and the arguments offered
before them. They must not leap hastily to conclusions, nor form
opinions before they have heard all. They must not presume
crime or fraud. They must neither be ruled by stubborn pride of
opinion, nor be too facile and yielding to the views and arguments
of others. In deducing the motive from the proven act, they
must not assign to the act either the best or the worst motives, but
those wfcich they would think it just and fair for the world to as-
sign to it, if they themselves had done it ; nor must they endeavor
to make many little circumstances, that weigh nothing separately,
weigh much together, to prove their own acuteness and sagacity.
These are sound rules for every juror, also, to observe.
126

PROVOST AND JUDGE. I2/

In our intercourse with others, there are two kinds of injustice:
the first, of those who offer an injury; the second, of those who
have it in their power to avert an injury from those to whom it is
offered, and yet do it not. So active injustice may be done in two
ways — by force and by fraud, — of which force is lion-like, and
fraud fox-like, — both utterly repugnant to social duty, but fraud
the more detestable.

Every wrong done by one man to another, whether it affect his
person, his property, his happiness, or his reputation, is an offence
against the law of justice. The field of this Degree is therefore a
wide and vast one; and Masonry seeks for the most impressive
mode of enforcing the law of justice, and the most effectual means
of preventing wrong and injustice.

To this end it teaches this great and momentous truth: that
wrong and injustice once done cannot be undone; but are eternal
in their consequences ; once committed, are numbered with the
irrevocable Past; that the wrong that is done contains its own
retributive penalty as surely and as naturally as the acorn con-
tains the oak. Its consequences are its punishment ; it needs no
other, and can have no heavier ; they are involved in its commis-
sion, and cannot be separated from it. A wrong done to another
is an injury done to our own Nature, an offence against our own
souls, a disfiguring of the image of the Beautiful and Good. Pun-
ishment is not the execution of a sentence, but the occurrence of
an effect. It is ordained to follow guilt, not by the decree of God
as a judge, but by a law enacted by Him as the Creator and Legis-
lator of the Universe. It is not an arbitrary and artificial annex-
ation, but an ordinary and logical consequence ; and therefore
must be borne by the wrong-doer, and through him may flow on
to others. It is the decision of the infinite justice of God, in the
form of law.

There can be no interference with, or remittance of, or protec-
tion from, the natural effects of our wrongful acts. God will not in-
terpose between the cause and its consequence ; and in that sense
there can be no forgiveness of sins. The act which has debased
our soul may be repented of, may be turned from ; but the injury
is done. The debasement may be redeemed by after-efforts, the
stain obliterated by bitterer struggles and severer sufferings ; but
the efforts and the endurance which might have raised the soul to
the loftiest heights are now exhausted in merely regaining what

126 MORALS AND DOGMA.

it has lost. There must always be a wide difference between
him who only ceases to do evil, and him who has always done
well.

He will certainly be a far more scrupulous watcher over his con-
duct, and far more careful of his deeds, who believes that those
deeds will inevitably bear their natural consequences, exempt from
after intervention, than he who believes that penitence and par-
don will at any time unlink the chain of sequences. Surely we
shall do less wrong and injustice, if the conviction is fixed and
embedded in our souls that everything- done is done irrevocably,
that even the Omnipotence of God cannot uncommit a deed, can-
not make that undone which has been done; that every act of
ours must bear its allotted fruit, according to the everlasting laws,
— must remain forever ineffaceably inscribed on the tablets of
Universal Nature.

If you have wronged another, you may grieve, repent, and reso-
lutely determine against any such weakness in future. You may,
so far as it is possible, make reparation. It is well. The injured
party may forgive you, according to the meaning of human lan-
guage; but the deed is done; and all the powers of Nature, were
they to conspire in your behalf, could not make it undone; the
consequences to the body, the consequences to the soul, though no
man may perceive them, are there, are written in the annals of the
Past, and must reverberate throughout all time.

Repentance for a wrong done, bears, like every other act, its own
fruit, the fruit of purifying the heart and amending the Future,
but not of effacing the Past. The commission of the wrong is an
irrevocable act ; but it does not incapacitate the soul to do right
for the future. Its consequences cannot be expunged ; but its
course need not be pursued. Wrong and evil perpetrated, though
ineffaceable, call for no despair, but for efforts more energetic than
before. Repentance is still as valid as ever ; but it is valid to se-
cure the Future, not to obliterate the Past.

Even the pulsations of the air, once set in motion by the human
voice, cease not to exist with the sounds to which they gave rise.
Their quickly-attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to human
ears. But the waves of air thus raised perambulate the surface of
earth and ocean, and in less than twenty hours,*-every atom of the
atmosphere takes up the altered movement due to that infinitesi-
mal portion of primitive motion which has been conveyed to it

PROVOST AND JUDGE. I2Q

through countless channels, and which must continue to influence
its path throughout its future existence. The air is one vast
library, on whose pages is forever written all that man has ever
said or even whispered. There, in their mutable, but unerring
characters, mixed with the earliest, as well as the latest signs of
mortality, stand forever recorded, vows unredeemed, promises un-
fulfilled ; perpetuating, in the movements of each particle, all in
unison, the testimony of man's changeful will. God reads that
book, though we cannot.

So earth, air, and ocean are the eternal witnesses of the acts
that we have done. No motion impressed by natural causes or by
human agency is ever obliterated. The track of every keel which
has ever disturbed the surface of the ocean remains forever regis-
tered in the future movements of all succeeding particles which
may occupy its place. Every criminal is by the laws of the Al-
mighty irrevocably chained to the testimony of his crime ; for
every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes its
particles may migrate, will still retain, adhering to it through
every combination, some movement derived from that very mus-
cular effort by which the crime itself was perpetrated.

What if our faculties should be so enhanced in a future life as
to enable us to perceive and trace the ineffaceable consequences of
our idle words and evil deeds, and render our remorse and grief
as eternal as those consequences themselves? No more fearful
punishment to a superior intelligence can be conceived, than to
see still in action, with the consciousness that it must continue
in action forever, a cause of wrong put in motion by itself ages
before. v

Masonry, by its teachings, endeavors to restrain men from the
commission of injustice and acts of wrong and outrage. Though
it does not endeavor to usurp the place of religion, still its code
of morals proceeds upon other principles than the municipal law ;
and it condemns and punishes offences which neither that law
punishes nor public opinion condemns. In the Masonic law, to
cheat and overreach in trade, at the bar, in politics, are deemed no
more venial than theft; nor a deliberate lie than perjury; nor
slander than robbery ; nor seduction than murder.

Especially it condemns those wrongs of which the doer induces
another to partake. He may repent ; he may, after agonizing
struggles, regain the path of virtue; his spirit may reachieve its

130 MORALS AND DOGMA.

purity through much anguish, after many strifes ; but the weaker
fellow-creature whom he led astray, whom he made a sharer in his
guilt, but whom he cannot make a sharer in his repentance and
amendment, whose downward course (the first step of which he
taught) he cannot check, but is compelled to witness, — what for-
giveness of sins can avail him there? There is his perpetual, his
inevitable punishment, which no repentance can alleviate, and no
mercy can remit.

Let us be just, also, in judging of other men's motives. We
know but little of the real merits or demerits of any fellow-crea-
ture. We can rarely say with certainty that this man is more
guilty than that, or even that this man is very good or very
wicked. Often the basest men leave behind them excellent repu-
tations. There is scarcely one of us who has not, at some time in
his life, been on the edge of the commission of a crime. Every
one of us can look back, and shuddering see the time when our
feet stood upon the slippery crags that overhung the abyss of
guilt ; and when, if temptation had been a little more urgent, or
a little longer continued, if penury had pressed us a little harder,
or a little more wine had further disturbed our intellect, dethroned
our judgment, and aroused our passions, our feet would have slip-
ped, and we should have fallen, never to rise again.

We may be able to say — "This man has lied, has pilfered, has
forged, has embezzled moneys intrusted to him ; and that man has
gone through life with clean hands." But we cannot say that the
former has not struggled long, though unsuccessfully, against
temptations under which the second would have succumbed with-
out an effort. We can say which has the cleanest hands before
man; but not which has the cleanest soul before God. We may
be able to say, this man has committed adultery, and that man
has been ever chaste ; but we cannot tell but that the innocence
of one may have been due to the coldness of his heart, to the ab-
sence of a motive, to the presence of a fear, to the slight degree
of the temptation ; nor but that the fall of the other may have
been preceded by the most vehement self-contest, caused by the
most over-mastering frenzy, and atoned for by. the most hallowing
repentance. Generosity as well as niggardliness may be a mere
yielding to native temperament; and in the eye of Heaven, a long
life of beneficence in one man may have cost less effort, and may
indicate less virtue and less sacrifice of interest, than a few rare

PROVOST AND JUDGE. 13!

hidden acts of kindness wrung by duty out of the reluctant and
unsympathizing nature of the other. There may be more real
merit, more self-sacrificing effort, more of the noblest elements
of moral grandeur, in a life of failure, sin, and shame, than in a
career, to our eyes, of stainless integrity.

When we condemn or pity the fallen, how do we know that,
tempted like him, we should not have fallen like him, as soon, and
perhaps with less resistance ? How can we know what we should
do if we were out of employment, famine crouching, gaunt, and
hungry, on our fireless hearth, and our children wailing for bread ?
We fall not because we are not enough tempted! He that hath
fallen may be at heart as honest as we. How do we know that our
daughter, sister, wife, could resist the abandonment, the desola-
tion, the distress, the temptation, that sacrificed the virtue of their
poor abandoned sister of shame? Perhaps they also have not
fallen, because they have not been sorely tempted ! Wisely are
we directed to pray that we may not be exposed to temptation.

Human justice must be ever uncertain. How many judicial
murders have been committed through ignorance of the phenom-
ena of insanity ! How many men hung for murder who were no
more murderers at heart than the jury that tried and the judge
that sentenced them ! It may well be doubted whether the ad-
ministration of human laws, in every country, is not one gigantic
mass of injustice and wrong. God seeth not as man seeth; and
the most abandoned criminal, black as he is before the world, may
yet have continued to keep some little light burning in a corner
of his soul, which would long since have gone out in that of those
who walk proudly in the sunshine of immaculate fame, if they had
been tried and tempted like the poor outcast.

We do not know even the outside life of men. We are not com-
petent to pronounce even on their deeds. We do not know half
the acts of wickedness or virtue, even of our most immediate fel-
lows. We cannot say, with certainty, even of our nearest friend,
that he has not committed a particular sin, arid broken a particu-
lar commandment. Let each man ask his own heart! Of how
many of our best and of our worst acts and qualities are our most
intimate associates utterly unconscious! How many virtues 'does
not the world give us credit for, that we do not possess ; or vices
condemn us for, of which we are not the slaves ! It is but a small
portion of our evil deeds and thoughts that ever comes to light ;

132 MORALS AND DOGMA.

and of our few redeeming' goodnesses, the largest portion is known
to God alone.

We shall, therefore, be just in judging of other men, only when
we are charitable; and we should assume the prerogative of judg-
ing others only when the duty is forced upon us ; since we are so
almost certain to err, and the consequences of error are so serious.
No man need covet the office of judge ; for in assuming it he as-
sumes the gravest and most oppressive responsibility. Yet you
have assumed it ; we all assume it ; for man is ever ready to judge,
and ever ready to condemn his neighbor, while upon tha same state
of case he acquits himself. See, therefore, that you exercise your
office cautiously and charitably, lest, in passing judgment upon
the criminal, you commit a greater wrong than that for which you
condemn him, and the consequences of which must be eternal.

The faults and crimes and follies of other men are not unim-
portant to us ; but form a part of our moral discipline. War and
bloodshed at a distance, and frauds .which do not affect our pecu-
niary interest, yet touch us in our feelings, and concern our moral
welfare. They have much to do with all thoughtful hearts. The
public eye may look unconcernedly on the miserable victim of vice,
and that shattered wreck of a man may move the multitude to
laughter or to scorn. But to the Mason, it is the form of sacred
humanity that is before him ; it is an erring fellow-being ; a deso-
late, forlorn, forsaken ?oul ; and his thoughts, enfolding the poor
wretch, will be far deeper than those of indifference, ridicule, or
contempt. All human offences, the whole system of dishonesty,
evasion, circumventing, forbidden indulgence, and intriguing am-
bition, in which men are struggling with each other, will be looked
upon by a thoughtful Mason, not merely as a scene of mean toils
and strifes, but as the solemn conflicts of immortal minds, for ends
vast and momentous as their own being. It is a sad and unworthy
strife, and may well be viewed with indignation ; but that indig-
nation must melt into pity. For the stakes for which these game-
sters play are not those which they imagine, not those which are
in sight. For example, this man plays for a petty office, and gains
it ; but the real stake he gains is sycophancy,, uncharitableness,
slander, and deceit.

Good men are too proud of their goodness. They are respecta-
ble ; dishonor comes not near them ; their countenance has weight
and influence ; their robes are unstained ; the poisonous breath of

PROVOST AND JUDGE. 133

calumny has never been breathed upon their fair name. How easy
it is for them to look down with scorn upon the poor degraded
offender ; to pass him by with a lofty step ; to draw up the folds
of their garment around them, that they may not be soiled by his
touch ! Yet the Great Master of Virtue did not so ; but descended
to familiar intercourse with publicans and sinners, with the Samar-
itan woman, with the outcasts and the Pariahs of the Hebrew
world.

Many men think themselves better, in proportion as they can
detect sins in others ! When they go over the catalogue of their
neighbor's unhappy derelictions of temper or conduct, they often,
amidst much apparent concern, feel a secret exultation, that
destroys all their own pretensions to wisdom and moderation, and
even to virtue. Many even take actual pleasure in the sins of
others ; and this is the case with every one whose thoughts are
often employed in agreeable comparisons of his own virtues with
his neighbors' faults.

The power of gentleness is too little seen in the world ; the sub-
duing influences of pity, the might of love, the control of mildness
over passion, the commanding majesty of that perfect character
which mingles grave displeasure with grief and pity for the offend-
er. So it is that a Mason should treat his brethren who go astray.
Not with bitterness ; nor yet with good-natured easiness, nor with
worldly indifference, nor with the philosophic coldness, nor with a
laxity of conscience, that accounts everything well, that passes
under the seal of public opinion; but with charity, with pitying
loving-kindness.

The human heart will not bow willingly to what is infirm and
wrong in human nature. If it yields to us, it must yield to what
is divine in us. The wickedness of my neighbor cannot submit to
my wickedness ; his sensuality, for instance, to my anger against
his vices. My faults are not the instruments that are to arrest
his faults. And therefore impatient reformers, and denouncing
preachers, and hasty reprovers, and angry parents, and irritable
relatives generally fail, in their several departments, to reclaim the
erring.

A moral offence is sickness, pain, loss, dishonor, in the immor-
tal part of man. It is guilt, and misery added to guilt. It is itself
calamity : and brings upon itself, in addition, the calamity of God's
disapproval, the abhorrence of all virtuous men, and the soul's own

134 MORALS AND DOGMA.

abhorrence. Deal faithfully, but patiently and tenderly, with this
evil ! It is no matter for petty provocation, nor for personal strife,
nor for selfish irritation.

Speak kindly to your erring brother ! God pities him : Christ
has died for him : Providence waits for him : Heaven's mercy
yearns toward him ; and Heaven's spirits are ready to welcome him
back with joy. Let your voice be in unison with all those powers
that God is using- for his recovery !

If one defrauds you, and exults at it, he is the most to be pitied
of human beings. He has done himself a far deeper injury than he
has done you. It is him, and not you, whom God regards with
mingled displeasure and compassion ; and His judgment should
DC your law. Among all the benedictions of the Holy Mount
there is not one for this man ; but for the merciful, the peace-
makers, and the persecuted they are poured out freely.

We are all men of like passions, propensities, and exposures.
There are elements in us all, which might have been perverted,
through the successive processes of moral deterioration, to the
worst of crimes. The wretch whom the execration of the throng-
ing crowd pursues to the scaffold, is not worse than any one of that
multitude might have become under similar circumstances. He
is to be condemned indeed, but also deeply to be pitied.

It does not become the frail and sinful to be vindictive toward
even the worst criminals. We owe much to the good Providence
of God, ordaining for us a lot more favorable to virtue. We all had
that within us, that might have been pushed to the same excess.
Perhaps we should have fallen as he did, with less temptation. Per-
haps we have done acts, that, in proportion to the temptation or
provocation, were less excusable than his great crime. Silent pity
and sorrow for the victim should mingle with our detestation of
the guilt. Even the pirate who murders in cold blood on the high
seas, is such a man as you or I might have been. Orphanage in
childhood, or base and dissolute and abandoned parents; an un-
friended youth ; evil companions ; ignorance and want of moral
cultivation ; the temptations of sinful pleasure or grinding pov-
erty ; familiarity with vice ; a scorned and blighted name ; seared
and crushed affections ; desperate fortunes ; these are steps that
might have led any one among us to unfurl upon the high seas the
bloody flag of universal defiance ; to wage war with our kind ; to
live the life and die the death of the reckless and remorseless free-

PROVOST AND JUDGE. 135

hooter. Many affecting relationships of humanity plead with us
to pity him. His head once rested on a mother's bosom. He was
once the object of sisterly love and domestic endearment. Perhaps
his hand, since often red with blood, once clasped another little
loving hand at the altar. Pity him then; his blighted hopes and
his crushed heart ! It is proper that frail and erring creatures
like us should do so ; should feel the crime, but feel it as weak,
tempted, and rescued creatures should. It may be that when God
weighs men's crimes, He will take into consideration the tempta-
tions and the adverse circumstances that led to them, and the op-
portunities for moral culture of the offender ; and it may be that our
own offences will weigh heavier than we think, and the murderer's
lighter than according to man's judgment.

On all accounts, therefore, let the true Mason never forget the
solemn injunction, necessary to be observed at almost every mo-
ment of a busy life: "JUDGE NOT, LEST YE YOURSELVES BE JUDGED:

FOR WHATSOEVER JUDGMENT YE MEASURE UNTO OTHERS, THE
SAME SHALL IN TURN BE MEASURED UNTO YOU." Such IS the

lesson taught the Provost and Judge.

/

I 1

VIII.
INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING.

IN this Degree you have been taught the important lesson, that
none are entitled to advance in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite, who have not by study and application made themselves
familiar with Masonic learning and jurisprudence. The Degrees
of this Rite are not for those who are content with the mere work
and ceremonies, and do not seek to explore the mines of wisdom
that lie buried beneath the surface. You still advance toward the
Light, toward that star, blazing in the distance, which is an em-
blem of the Divine Truth, given by God to the first men, and
preserved amid all the vicissitudes of ages in the traditions and
teachings of Masonry. How far you will advance, depends upon
yourse4f alone. Here, as everywhere in the world, Darkness
struggles with Light, and clouds and shadows intervene between
you and the Truth.

When you shall have become imbued with the morality of Ma-
sonry, with which you yet are, and for some time will be exclu-
sively occupied. — when you shall have learned to practise all the
virtues which it inculcates ; when they become familiar to you as
your Household Gods; then will you be prepared to receive its
lofty philosophical instruction, and to scale the heights upon
whose summit Licrht and Truth sit enthroned. Step by step men
must advance toward Perfection : and each Masonic Degree is
meant to be one of those steps. Each is a development of a par-
ticular duty; and in the present you are taught charity and be-
136

INTENDAXT OF THE BUILDING. 137

nevolence ; to be to your brethren an example of virtue ; to correct '
your own faults ; and to endeavor to correct those of your brethren.

Here, as in all the Degrees, you meet with the emblems and the
names of Deity, the true knowledge of whose character and attri-
butes it has ever been a chief object of Masonry to perpetuate. To
appreciate His infinite greatness and goodness, to rely implicitly
upon His Providence, to revere and venerate Him as the Supreme
Architect, Creator, and Legislator of the universe, is the first of
Masonic duties.

The Battery of this Degree, and the five circuits which you
made around the Lodge, allude to the five points of fellowship,
and are intended to recall them vividly to your mind. To go upon
a brother's errand or to his relief, even barefoot and upon flinty
ground ; to remember him in your supplications to the Deity ; to
clasp him to your heart, and protect him against malice and evil-
speaking ; to uphold him when about to stumble and fall ; and to
give him prudent, honest, and friendly counsel, are duties plainly
written upon the pages of God's great code of law, and first among
the ordinances of Masonry.

The first sign of the Degree is expressive of the diffidence and
humility with which we inquire into the nature and attributes of
the Deity; the second, of the profound awe and reverence with
which we contemplate His glories; and the third, of the sorrow
with which we reflect upon our insufficient observance of our du-
ties, and our imperfect compliance with His statutes.

The distinguishing property of man is to search for and follow
after truth. Therefore, when relaxed from our necessary cares
and concerns, we then covet to see, to hear, and to learn some-
what ; and we esteem knowledge of things, either obscure or won-
derful, to be the indispensable means of living happily. Truth.
Simplicity, and Candor are most agreeable to the nature of man-
kind. Whatever is virtuous consists either in Sagacity, and the
perception of Truth ; or in the preservation of Human Society,
by giving to every man his due, and observing the faith of con-
tracts ; or in the greatness and firmness of an elevated and unsub-
dued mind ; or in observing order and regularity in all our words
and in all ouractions ; in which consist Moderation and Temperance.

Masonry has in all times religiously preserved that enlightened
faith from which flow sublime Devotedness, the sentiment of Fra-
ternity fruitful of good works, the spirit of indulgence and peace,

10

138 MORALS AND DOGMA.

of sweet hopes and effectual consolations ; and inflexibility in the
accomplishment of the most painful and arduous duties. It has
always propagated it with ardor and perseverance ; and therefore
it labors at the present day more zealously than ever. Scarcely a
Masonic discourse is pronounced, that does not demonstrate the
necessity and advantages of this faith, and especially recall the two
constitutive principles of religion, that make all religion, — love of
God, and love of our neighbor. Masons carry these principles into
the bosoms of their families and of society. While the Sectarians
of former times enfeebled the religious spirit, Masonry, forming
one great People over the whole globe, and marching under the
great banner of Charity and Benevolence, preserves that religious
feeling, strengthens it, extends it in its purity and simplicity, as it
has always existed in the depths of the human heart, as it existed
even under the dominion of the most ancient forms of worship,
but where gross and debasing superstitions forbade its recognition.

A Masonic Lodge should resemble a bee-hive, in which all the
members work together with ardor for the common good. Ma-
sonry is not made for cold souls and narrow minds, that do not
comprehend its lofty mission and sublime apostolate. Here the
anathema against lukewarm souls applies. To comfort misfortune,
to popularize knowledge, to teach whatever is true and pure in re-
ligion and philosophy, to accustom men to respect order and the
proprieties of life, to point out the way to genuine happiness, to
prepare for that fortunate period, when all the fractions of the
Human Family, united by the bonds of Toleration and Frater-
nity, shall be but one household, — these are labors that may well
excite zeal and even enthusiasm.

We do not now enlarge upon or elaborate these ideas. We but
utter them to you briefly, as hints, upon which you may at your
leisure reflect. Hereafter, if you continue to advance, they will be
unfolded, explained, and developed.

Masonry utters no impracticable and extravagant precepts, cer-
tain, because they are so, to be disregarded. It asks of its initiates
nothing that it is not possible and even easy for them to perform.
Its teachings are eminently practical ; and its statutes can be
obeyed by every just, upright, and honest mari; no matter what his
faith or creed. Its object is to attain the greatest practical good,
without seeking to make men perfect. It doe$ not meddle with
the domain of religion, nor inquire into the mysteries of regen-

INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 139

eration. It teaches those truths that are written by the finger of
God upon the heart of man, those views of duty which have been
wrought out by the meditations of the studious, confirmed by the
allegiance of the good and wise, and stamped as sterling by the
response they find in every uncorrupted mind. It does not dog-
matize, nor vainly imagine dogmatic certainty to be attainable.

Masonry does not occupy itself with crying down this world,
with its splendid beauty, its thrilling interests, its glorious works,
its noble and holy affections ; nor exhort us to detach our hearts
from this earthly life, as empty, fleeting, and unworthy, and fix
them upon Heaven, as the only sphere deserving the love of the
loving or the meditation of the wise. It teaches that man has
high duties to perform, and a high destiny to fulfill, on this earth ;
that this world is not merely the portal to another ; and that this
life, though not our only one, is an integral one, and the particular
one with which we are here meant to be concerned ; that the Pres-
ent is our scene of action, and the Future for speculation and
for trust; that man was sent upon the earth to live in it, to enjoy
it, to study it, to love it, to embellish it, to make the most of it.
It is his country, on which he should lavish his affections and his
efforts. It is here his influences are to operate. It is his house,
and not a tent; his home, and not merely a school. He is sent
into this world, not to be constantly hankering after, dreaming of,
preparing for another ; but to do his duty and fulfill his destiny
on this earth; to do all that lies in his power to improve it, to
render it a scene of elevated happiness to himself, to those around
him, to those who are to come after him. His life here is part of
his immortality ; and this world, also, is among the stars.

And thus, Masonry teaches us, will man best prepare for that
Future which he hopes for. The Unseen cannot hold a higher
place in our affections than the Seen and the Familiar. The law
of our being is Love of Life, and its interests and adornments ;
love of the world in which our lot is cast, engrossment with the
interests and affections of earth. Not a low or sensual love ; not
love of wealth, of fame, of ease, of power, of splendor. Not low
worldliness ; but the love of Earth as the garden on which the
Creator has lavished such miracles of beauty ; as the habitation
of humanity, the arena of its conflicts, the scene of its illimitable
progress, the dwelling-place of the wise, the good, the active, the
loving, and the dear ; the place of opportunity for the development

140 MORALS AND DOGMA.

by means of sin and suffering and sorrow, of the noblest passions,
the loftiest virtues, and the tenderest sympathies.

They take very unprofitable pains, who endeavor to persuade
men that they are obliged wholly to despise this world, and all that
is in it, even whilst they themselves live here. God hath not taken
all that pains in forming and framing and furnishing and adorn-
ing the world, that they who were made by Him to live in it
should despise it. It will be enough, if they do not love it too im-
moderately. It is useless to attempt to extinguish all those affec-
tions and passions which are and always will be inseparable from
human nature. As long as the world lasts, and honor and virtue
and industry have reputation in the world, there will be ambition
and emulation and appetite in the best and most accomplished men
in it ; and if there were not, more barbarity and vice and wicked-
ness would cover every nation of the world, than it now suffers
under.

Those only who feel a deep interest in, and affection for, this
world, will work resolutely for its amelioration. Those who under-
value this life, naturally become querulous and discontented, and
lose their interest in the welfare of their fellows. To serve them,
and so to do our duty as Masons, we must feel that the object is
worth the exertion ; and be content with this world in which God
has placed us, until He permits us to remove to a better one. He
is here with us, and does not deem this an unworthy world.

It is a serious thing to defame and belie a whole world ; to speak
of it as the abode of a poor, toiling, drudging, ignorant, contempt-
ible race. You would not so discredit your family, your friendly
circle, your village, your city, your country. The world is not a
wretched and a worthless one ; nor is it a misfortune, but a thing
to be thankful for, to be a man. If life is worthless, so also is im-
mortality.

In society itself, in that living mechanism of human relation-
ships that spreads itself over the world, there is a finer essence
within, that as truly moves it, as any power, heavy or expansive,
moves the sounding manufactory or the swift-flying car. The
man-machine hurries to and fro upon the earth, stretches out its
hands on every side, to toil, to barter, to unnumbered labors and
enterprises ; and almost always the motive, that which moves it,
is something that takes hold of the comforts, affections, and hopes
of social existence. True, the mechanism often works with diffi-

INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 14!

culty, drags heavily, grates and screams with harsh collision. True,
the essence of finer motive, becoming intermixed with baser and
coarser ingredients, often clogs, obstructs, jars, and deranges the
free and noble action of social life. But he is neither grateful nor
wise, who looks cynically on all this, and loses the tine sense of
social good in its perversions. That I can be a friend, that I can
have a friend, though it were but one in the world ; that fact, that
wondrous good fortune, we may set against all the sufferings of
our social nature. That there is such a place on earth as a home,
that resort and sanctuary of in- walled and shielded joy, we may
set against all the surrounding desolations of life. That one can
be a true, social man, can speak his true thoughts, amidst all the
janglings of controversy and the warring of opinions ; that fact
from within, outweighs all facts from without.

In the visible aspect and action of society, often repulsive and
annoying, we are apt to lose the due sense of its invisible bless-
ings. As in Nature it is not the coarse and palpable, not soils and
rains, nor even fields and flowers, that are so beautiful, as the in-
visible spirit of wisdom and beauty that pervades it ; so in society,
it is the invisible, and therefore unobserved, that is most beautiful.

What nerves the arm of toil? If man minded himself alone,
he would fling down the spade and axe, and rush to the desert ; or
roam through the world as a wilderness, and make that world a
desert. His home, which he sees not, perhaps, but once or twice
in a day, is the invisible bond of the world. It is the good, strong,
and noble faith that men have in each other, which gives the lof-
tiest character to business, trade, and commerce. Fraud occurs in
the rush of business; but it is the exception. Honesty is the
rule ; and all the frauds in the world cannot tear the great bond of
human confidence. If they could, commerce would furl its sails
on every sea, and all the cities of the world would crumble into
ruins. The bare character of a man on the other side of the
world, whom you never saw, whom you never will see, you hold
good for a bond of thousands. The most striking feature of the
political state is not governments, nor constitutions, nor laws, nor
enactments, nor the judicial power, nor the police ; but the univer-
sal will of the people to be governed by the common weal. Take
off that restraint, and no government on earth could stand for an
hour.

Of the many teachings of Masonry, one of the most valuable is,

142 MORALS AND DOGMA.

that we should not depreciate this life. It does not hold, that
when we reflect on the destiny that awaits man on earth, we ought
to bedew his cradle with our tears ; but, like the Hebrews, it hails
the birth of a child with joy, and holds that his birthday should
be a festival.

It has no sympathy with those who profess to have proved this
life, and found it little worth; who have deliberately made up
their minds that it is far more miserable than happy ; because its
employments are tedious, and their schemes often baffled, their
friendships broken, or their friends dead, its pleasures palled, and
its honors faded, and its paths beaten, familiar, and dull.

Masonry deems it no mark of great piety toward God to dis-
parage, if not despise, the state that He has ordained for us. It
does not absurdly set up the claims of another world, not in com-
parison merely, but in competition, with the claims of this. It
looks upon both as parts of one system. It holds that a man may
make the best of this world and of another at the same time. It
does not teach its initiates to think better of other works and dis-
pensations of God, by thinking meanly of these. It does not look
upon life as so much time lost; nor regard its employments as
trifles unworthy of immortal beings ; nor tell its followers to fold
their arms, as if in disdain of their state and species ; but it looks
soberly and cheerfully upon the world, as a theatre of worthy
action, of exalted usefulness, and of rational and innocent enjoy-
ment.

It holds that, with all its evils, life is a blessing. To deny that
is to destroy the basis of all religion, natural and revealed. The
very foundation of all religion is laid on the firm belief that God
is good ; and if this life is an evil and a curse, no such belief can
be rationally entertained. To le\rel our satire at humanity and
human existence, as mean and contemptible ; to look on this world
as the habitation of a miserable race, fit only for mockery and
scorn ; to consider this earth as a dungeon or a prison, which has
no blessing to offer but escape from it, is to extinguish the primal
light of faith and hope and happiness, to destroy the basis of reli-
gion, and Truth's foundation in the goodness of God. If it in-
deed be so, then it matters not what else is true or not true ; spec-
ulation is vain and faith is vain; and all that belongs to man's
highest being is buried in the ruins of misanthropy, melancholy,
and despair.

INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 143

Our love of life ; the tenacity with which, in sorrow and suffer-
ing, we cling to it; our attachment to our home, to the spot that
gave us birth, to any place, however rude, unsightly, or barren, on
which the history of our years has been written, all show how dear
are the ties of kindred and society. Misery makes a greater im-
pression upon us than happiness ; because the former is not the
habit of our minds. It is a strange, unusual guest, and we are
more conscious of its presence. Happiness lives with us, and we
forget it. It does not excite us, nor disturb the order and course
of our thoughts. A great agony is an epoch in our life. We re-
member our afflictions, as we do the storm and earthquake,
because they are out of the common course of things. They are
like disastrous events, recorded because extraordinary ; and with
whole and unnoticed periods of prosperity between. We mark
and signalize the times of calamity; but many happy days and
unnoted periods of enjoyment pass, that are unrecorded either in
the book of memory, or in the scanty annals of our thanksgiving.
We are little disposed and less able to call up from the dim remem-
brances of our past years, the peaceful moments, the easy sensa-
tions, the bright thoughts, the quiet reveries, the throngs of kind
affections in which life flowed on, bearing us almost unconsciously
upon its bosom, because it bore us calmly and gently.

Life is not only good ; but it has been glorious in the experience
of millions. The glory of all human virtue clothes it. The splen-
dors of devotedness, beneficence, and heroism are upon it; the
crown of a thousand martyrdoms is upon its brow. The bright-
ness of the soul shines through this visible and sometimes dark-
ened life; through all its surrounding cares and labors. The
humblest life may feel its connection with its Infinite Source.
There is something mighty in the frail inner man ; something of
immortality in this momentary and transient being. The mind
stretches away, on every side, into infinity. Its thoughts flash
abroad, far into the boundless, the immeasurable, the infinite ; far
into the great, dark, teeming future ; and become powers and in-
fluences in other ages. To know its wonderful Author, to bring
down wisdom from the Eternal Stars, to bear upward its homage,
gratitude, and love, to the Ruler of all worlds, to be immortal in
our influences projected far into the slow-approaching Future,
makes life most worthy and most glorious.

Life is the wonderful creation of God. It is light, sprung from

144 MORALS AND DOGMA.

void darkness ; power, waked from inertness and impotence ; be-
ing created from nothing; and the contrast may well enkindle
wonder and delight. It is a rill from the infinite, overflowing
goodness ; and from the moment when it first gushes up into the
light, to that when it mingles with the ocean of Eternity, that
Goodness attends it and ministers to it. It is a great and glorious
gift. There is gladness in its infant voices ; joy in the buoyant
step of its youth ; deep satisfaction in its strong maturity ; and
peace in its quiet age. There is good for the good ; virtue for the
faithful ; and victory for the valiant. There is, even in this hum-
ble life, an infinity for those whose desires are boundless. There
are blessings upon its birth ; there is hope in its death ; and eter-
nity in its prospect. Thus earth, which binds many in chains, is
to the Mason both the starting-place and goal of immortality.
Many it buries in the rubbish of dull cares and wearying vanities ;
but to the Mason it is the lofty mount of meditation, where
Heaven, and Infinity and Eternity are spread before him and
around him. To the lofty-minded, the pure, and the virtuous, this
life is the beginning of Heaven, and a part of immortality.

God hath appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world ;
and that is a contented spirit. We may be reconciled to poverty
and a low fortune, if we suffer contentedness and equanimity to
make the proportions. No man is poor who doth not think him-
self so ; but if, in a full fortune, with impatience he desires more,
he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition. This virtue
of contentedness was the sum of all the old moral philosophy, and
is of most universal use in the whole course of our lives, and the
only instrument t© ease the burdens of the world and the enmities
of sad chances. It is the great reasonableness of complying with
the Divine Providence, which governs all the world, and hath so
ordered us in the administration of His great family. It is fit that
God should dispense His gifts as He pleases ; and if we murmur
here, we may, at the next melancholy, be troubled that He did not
make us to be angels or stars.

We ourselves make our fortunes good or bad ; and when God
lets loose a Tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or scorn, or a lessened
fortune, if we fear to die, or know not how to be patient, or are
proud, or covetous, then the calamity sits heavy on us. But if we
know how to manage a noble principle, and fear not death so much
as a dishonest action, and think impatience a worse evil than a

INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 145

fever, and pride to be the greatest disgrace as well as the greatest
folly, and poverty far preferable to the torments of avarice, we may
still bear an even mind and smile at the reverses of fortune and
the ill-nature of Fate.

If thou hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy constancy : and
if thou must die sooner than others, or than thou didst expect, yet
do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to him who is con-
tent, and to a man nothing is miserable unless it be unreasonable.
No man can make another man to be his slave, unless that other
hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain,
to hope or fear ; command these passions, and you are freer than
the Parthian Kings.

When an enemy reproaches us, let us look on him as an impar-
tial relator of our faults ; for he will tell us truer than our fondest
friend will, and we may forgive his anger, wrhile we make use of
the plainness of his declamation. The ox, when he is weary,
treads truest; and if there be nothing else in abuse, but that it
makes us to walk warily, and tread sure for fear of our enemies,
that is better than to be flattered into pride and carelessness.

If thou fallest from thy employment in public, take sanctuary
in an honest retirement, being indifferent to thy gain abroad, or
thy safety at home. When the north wind blows hard, and it rains
sadly, we do not sit down in it and cry ; but defend ourselves
against it with a warm garment, or a good fire and a dry roof. So
when the storm of a sad mischance beats upon our spirits, we may
turn it into something that is good, if we resolve to make it so;
and with equanimity and patience may shelter ourselves from its
inclement pitiless pelting. If it develop our patience, and give
occasion for heroic endurance, it hath done us good enough to re-
compense us sufficiently for all the temporal affliction ; for so a
wise man shall overrule his stars ; and have a greater influence
upon his own content, than all the constellations and planets of
the firmament.

Compare not thy condition with the few above thee, but to se-
cure thy content, look upon those thousands with whom thou
wouldst not, for any interest, change thy fortune and condition.
A soldier must not think himself unprosperous, if he be not suc-
cessful as Alexander or Wellington; nor any man deem himself
unfortunate that he hath not the wealth of Rothschild ; but rather
let the former rejoice that he is not lessened like the many generals

146 MORALS AND DOGMA.

who went down horse and man before Napoleon, and the latter
that he is not the beggar who, bareheaded in the bleak winter
v/ind holds out his tattered hat for charity. There may be many
who are richer and more fortunate ; but many thousands who are
very miserable, compared to thee.

After the worst assaults of Fortune, there will be something
left to us, — a merry countenance, a cheerful spirit, and a good con-
science, the Providence of God, our hopes of Heaven, our charity
for those who have injured us; perhaps a loving wife, and many
friends to pity, and some to relieve us ; and light and air, and all
the beauties of Nature ; we can read, discourse, and meditate ; and
having still these blessings, we should be much in love with sor-
row and peevishness to lose them all, and prefer to sit down on
our little handful of thorns.

Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them, and the evils
of it bear patiently and calmly ; for this day only is ours : we are
dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. When
our fortunes are violently changed, our spirits are unchanged, if
they always stood in the suburbs and expectation of sorrows and
reverses. The blessings of immunity, safeguard, liberty, and in-
tegrity deserve the thanksgiving of a whole life. We are quit from
a thousand calamities, every one of which, if it were upon us,
would make us insensible of our present sorrow, and glad to re-
ceive it in exchange for that other greater affliction.

Measure your desires by your fortune and condition, not your
fortunes by your desires : be governed by your needs, not by your
fancy ; by nature, not by evil customs and ambitious principles.
It is no evil to be poor, but to be vicious and impatient. Is that
beast better, that hath two or three mountains to graze on, than
the little bee that feeds on dew or manna, and lives upon what falls
every morning from the store-houses of Heaven, clouds and
Providence ?

There are some instances of fortune and a fair condition that
cannot stand with some others; but if you desire this, you must
lose that, and unless you be content with one, you lose the com-
fort of both. If you covet learning, you must have leisure and a
retired life ; if honors of State and political distinctions, you must
be ever abroad in public, and get experience, and do all men's
business, and keep all company, and have no leisure at all. If you
will be rich, you must be frugal ; if you will be popular, you must

INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING. 147

be bountiful ; if a philosopher, you must despise riches. If you
would be famous as Epaminondas, accept also his poverty, for it
added lustre to his person, and envy to his fortune, and his virtue
without it could not have been so excellent. If you would have
the reputation of a martyr, you must needs accept his persecution ;
if of a benefactor of the world, the world's injustice ; if truly great,
you must expect to see the mob prefer lesser men to yourself.

God esteems it one of His glories, that He brings good out of
evil ; and therefore it were but reason we should trust Him to
govern His own world as He pleases ; and that we should patiently
wait until the change cometh, or the reason is discovered.

A Mason's contentedness must by no means be a mere contented
selfishness, like his who, comfortable himself, is indifferent to the
discomfort of others. There will always be in this world wrongs
to forgive, suffering to alleviate, sorrow asking for sympathy, ne-
cessities and destitution to relieve, and ample occasion for the
exercise of active charity and beneficence. And he who sits un-
concerned amidst it all, perhaps enjoying his own comforts and
luxuries the more, by contrasting them with the hungry and rag-
ged destitution and shivering misery of his fellows, is not con-
tented, but selfish and unfeeling.

It is the saddest of all sights upon this earth, that of a man lazy
and luxurious, or hard and penurious, to whom want appeals in
vain, and suffering cries in an unknown tongue. The man whose
hasty anger hurries him into violence and crime is not half so un-
worthy to live. He is the faithless steward, that embezzles what
God has given him in trust for the impoverished and suffering
among his brethren. The true Mason must be and must have a
right to be content with himself ; and he can be so only when he
lives not for himself alone, but for others also, who need his assist-
ance and have a claim upon his sympathy.

"Charity is the great channel," it has been well said, "through
which God passes all His mercy upon mankind. For we receive
absolution of our sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother.
This is the rule of our hopes and the measure of our desire in
this world ; and on the day of death and judgment, the great sen-
tence upon mankind shall be transacted according to our alms,
which is the other part of charity. God himself is love; and
every degree of charity that dwells in us is the participation of the
Divine nature."

148 MORALS AND DOGMA.

These principles Masonry reduces to practice. By them it ex-
pects you to be hereafter guided and governed. It especially
inculcates them upon him who employs the labor of others, for-
bidding him to discharge them, when to want employment is to
starve ; or to contract for the labor of man or woman at so low a
price that by over-exertion they must sell him their blood and life
at the same time with the labor of their hands.

These Degrees are also intended to teach more than morals. The
symbols and ceremonies of Masonry have more than one meaning.
They rather conceal than disclose the Truth. They hint it only, at
least ; and their varied meanings are only to be discovered by re-
flection and study. Truth is not only symbolized by Light, but
as the ray of light is separable into rays of different colors, so is
truth separable into kinds. It is the province of Masonry to teach
all truths — not moral truth alone, but political and philosophical,
and even religious truth, so far as concerns the great and essential
principles of each. The sphynx was a symbol. To whom has it
disclosed its inmost meaning? Who knows the symbolic meaning
of the pyramids?

You will hereafter learn who are the chief foes of human liberty
symbolized by the assassins of the Master Khurum; and in their
fate you may see foreshadowed that which we earnestly hope will
hereafter overtake those enemies of humanity, against whom Ma-
sonry has struggled so long.

IX.

ELECT OF THE NINE.

[Elu of the Nine.]

ORIGINALLY created to reward fidelity, obedience, and devotion,
this Degree was consecrated to bravery, devotedness, and patriot-
ism ; and your obligation has made known to you the duties which
you have assumed. They are summed up in the simple mandate,
"Protect the oppressed against the oppressor ; and devote yourself
to the honor and interests of your Country."

Masonry is not "speculative," nor theoretical, but experimental ;
not sentimental, but practical. It requires self-renunciation and
self-control. It wears a stern face toward men's vices, and inter-
feres with many of our pursuits and our fancied pleasures. It pen-
etrates beyond the region of vague sentiment ; beyond the regions
where moralizers and philosophers have woven their fine theories
and elaborated their beautiful maxims, to the very depths of the
heart, rebuking our littlenesses and meannesses, arraigning our
prejudices and passions, and warring against the armies of our
vices.

It wars against the passions that spring out of the bosom of a
world of fine sentiments, a world of admirable sayings and foul
practices, of good maxims and bad deeds ; whose darker passions
are not only restrained by custom and ceremony, but hidden even
from itself by a veil of beautiful sentiments. This terrible sole-
cism has existed in all ages. Romish sentimentalism has often
covered infidelity and vice ; Protestant straightness often lauds
spirituality and faith, and neglects homely truth, candor, and gen-
erosity ; and ultra-liberal Rationalistic refinement sometimes soars

149

150 MORALS AND DOGMA.

to heaven in its dreams, and wallows in the mire of earth in its
deeds.

There may be a world of Masonic sentiment; and yet a world
of little or no Masonry. In many minds there is a vague and gen-
eral sentiment of Masonic charity, generosity, and disinterested-
ness, but no practical, active virtue, nor habitual kindness, self-
sacrifice, or liberality. Masonry plays about them like the cold
though brilliant lights that flush and eddy over Northern skies.
There are occasional flashes of generous and manly feeling, tran-
sitory splendors, and momentary gleams of just and noble thought,
and transient coruscations, that light the Heaven of their imagina-
tion ; but there is no vital warmth in the heart ; and it remains as
cold and sterile as the Arctic or Antarctic regions. They do nothing ;
they gain no victories over themselves ; they make no progress ;
they' are still in the Northeast corner of the Lodge, as when they
first stood there as Apprentices ; and they do not cultivate Ma-
sonry, with a cultivation, determined, resolute, and regular, like
their cultivation of their estate, profession, or knowledge. Their
Masonry takes its chance in general and inefficient sentiment,
mournfully barren of results ; in words and formulas and fine pro-
fessions.

Most men have sentiments, but not principles. The former are
temporary sensations, the latter permanent and controlling im-
pressions of goodness and virtue. The former are general and
involuntary, and do not rise to the character of virtue. Every one
feels them. They flash up spontaneously in every heart. The
latter are rules of action, and shape and control our conduct ; and
it is these that Masonry insists upon.

We approve the right; but pursue the wrong. It is the old
story of human deficiency. No one abets or praises injustice,
fraud, oppression, covetousness, revenge, envy, or slander; and yet
how many who condemn these things, are themselves guilty of
them. It is no rare thing for him whose indignation is kindled at
a tale of wicked injustice, cruel oppression, base slander, or misery
inflicted by unbridled indulgence; whose anger flames in behalf
of the injured and ruined victims of wrong ; to- be in some relation
unjust, or oppressive, or envious, or self-indulgent, or a careless
talker of others. How wonderfully indignant the penurious man
often is, at the avarice or want of public spirit of another !

A great Preacher well said, "Therefore thou art inexcusable. O

ELECT OF THE NINE. 15!

Man, whosoever thou art, that judgest; for wherein thou judgest
another, thou condemnest thyself: for thou that judgest, doest the
same things." It is amazing to see how men can talk of virtue and
honor, whose life denies both. It is curious to see with what a
marvellous facility many bad men quote Scripture. It seems to
comfort their evil consciences, to use good words ; and to gloze
over bad deeds with holy texts, wrested to their purpose. Often,
the more a man talks about Charity and Toleration, the less he has
of either ; the more he talks about Virtue, the smaller stock he
has of it. The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart ;
but often the very reverse of what the man practises. And the
vicious and sensual often express, and in a sense feel, strong dis-
gust at vice and sensuality. Hypocrisy is not so common as is
imagined.

Here, in the Lodge, virtue and vice are matters of reflection and
feeling only. There is little opportunity here, for the practice of
either ; and Masons yield to the argument here, with facility and
readiness; because nothing is to follow. It is easy, and safe, here,
to feel upon these matters. But to-morrow, when they breathe the
atmosphere of worldly gains and competitions, and the passions
are again stirred at the opportunities of unlawful pleasure, all
their fine emotions about virtue, all their generous abhorrence of
selfishness and sensuality, melt away like a morning cloud.

For the time, their emotions and sentiments are sincere and
real. Men may be really, in a certain way, interested in Masonry,
while fatally deficient in virtue. It is not always hypocrisy. Men
pray most fervently and sincerely, and yet are constantly guilty
of acts so bad and base, so ungenerous and unrighteous, that the
crimes that crowd the dockets of our courts are scarcely worse.

A man may be a good sort- of man in general, and yet a very
bad man in particular : good in the Lodge and bad in the world ;
good in public, and bad in his family ; good at home, and bad on
a journey or in a strange city. Many a man earnestly desires to
be a good Mason. He says so, and is sincere. But if you require
him to resist a certain passion, to sacrifice a certain indulgence, to
control his appetite at a particular feast, or to keep his temper in
a dispute, you will find that he does not wish to be a good Mason,
in that particular case; or, wishing, is not able to resist his worse
impulses.

The duties of life are more than life. The law imposeth it upon

152 MORALS AND DOGMA.

every citizen, that he prefer the urgent service of his country be-
fore the safety of his life. If a man be commanded, saith a great
writer, to bring ordnance or munition to relieve any of the King's
towns that are distressed, then he cannot for any danger of tem-
pest justify the throwing of them overboard ; for there it holdeth
which was spoken by the Roman, when the same necessity of
weather was alleged to hold him from embarking : "Necesse est tit
earn, non ut vivam:" it needs that I go : it is not necessary I should
live. .

How ungratefully he slinks away, who dies, and does nothing to
reflect a glory to Heaven ? How barren a tree he is, who lives, and
spreads, and cumbers the ground, yet leaves not one seed, not one
good work to generate another after him ! All cannot leave alike ;
yet all may leave something, answering their proportions and their
kinds. Those are dead and withered grains of corn, out of which
there will not one ear spring. He will hardly find the way to
Heaven, who desires to go thither alone.

Industry is never wholly unfruitful. If it bring not joy with
the incoming profit, it will yet banish mischief from thy busied
gates. There is a kind of good angel waiting upon Diligence that
ever carries a laurel in his hand to crown her. How unworthy
was that man of the world who never did aught, but only lived
and died ! That we have liberty to do anything, we should ac-
count it a gift from the favoring Heavens; that we have minds
sometimes inclining us to use that liberty well, is a great bounty
of the Deity.

Masonry is action, and not inertness. It requires its Initiates to
WO?.K, actively and earnestly, for the benefit of their brethren,
their country, and mankind. It is the patron of the oppressed,
as it is the comforter and consoler of the unfortunate and wretched.
It &eems to it a worthier honor to be the instrument of advance-
ment and reform, than to enjoy all that rank and office and lofty
titles can bestow. It is the advocate of the common people in
those things which concern the best interests of mankind. It
hates insolent power and impudent usurpation. It pities the poor,
the sorrowing, the disconsolate ; it endeavors to raise and improve
the ignorant, the sunken, and the degraded.

Its fidelity to its mission will be accurately evidenced, by the
extent of the efforts it employs, and the means it sets on foot, to
improve the people at large and to better their condition ; chiefest

ELECT OF THE NINE. 153

of which, within its reach, is to aid in the education of the chil-
dren of the poor. An intelligent people, informed of its rights,
will soon come to know its power, and cannot long be oppressed ;
but if there be not a sound and virtuous populace, the elaborate
ornaments at the top of the pyramid of society will be a wretched
compensation for the want of solidity at the base. It is never safe
for a nation to repose on the lap of ignorance : and if there ever
was a time when public tranquillity was insured by the absence of
knowledge, that season is past. Unthinking stupidity cannot
sleep, without being appalled by phantoms and shaken by terrors.
The improvement of the mass of the people is the grand security
for popular liberty ; in the neglect of which, the politeness, refine-
ment, and knowledge accumulated in the higher orders and
wealthier classes will some day perish like dry grass in the hot fire
of popular fury.

It is not the mission of Masonry to engage in plots and conspir-
acies against the civil government. It is not the fanatical propa-
gandist of any creed or theory ; nor does it proclaim itself the
enemy of kings. It is the apostle of liberty, equality, and frater-
nity; but it is no more the high-priest of republicanism than of
constitutional monarchy. It contracts no entangling alliances
with any sect of theorists, dreamers, or philosophers. It does not
know those as its Initiates who assail the civil order and all lawful
authority, at the same time that they propose to deprive the dying
of the consolations of religion. It sits apart from all sects and
creeds, in its own calm and simple dignity, the same under every
government. It is still that which it was in the cradle of the hu-
man race, when no human foot had trodden the soil of Assyria
and Egypt, and no colonies had crossed the Himalayas into South-
ern India, Media, or Etruria.

It gives no countenance to anarchy and licentiousness ; and no
illusion of glory, or extravagant emulation of the ancients in-
flames it with an unnatural thirst for ideal and Utopian liberty.
It teaches that in rectitude of life and sobriety of habits is the
only sure guarantee for the continuance of political freedom ; and
it is chiefly the soldier of the sanctity of the laws and the rights
of conscience.

It recognizes it as a truth, that necessity, as well as abstract
right and ideal justice, must have its part in the making of laws,
the administration of affairs, and the regulation of relations in
ii

154 MORALS AND DOGMA.

society. It sees, indeed, that necessity rules in all the affairs of
man. It knows that where any man, or any number or race of
men, are so imbecile of intellect, so degraded, so incapable of self-
control, so inferior in the scale of humanity, as to be unfit to be
intrusted with the highest prerogatives of citizenship, the great
law of necessity, for the peace and safety of the community and
country, requires them to remain under the control of those of
larger intellect and superior wisdom. It trusts and believes that
God will, in his own good time, work out his own great and wise
purposes ; and it is willing to wait, where it does not see its own
way clear to some certain good.

It hopes and longs for the day when all the races of men, even
the lowest, will be elevated, and become fitted for political freedom ;
when, like all other evils that afflict the earth, pauperism, and
bondage or abject dependence, shall cease and disappear. But it
does not preach revolution to those who are fond of kings, nor re-
bellion that can end only in disaster and defeat, or in substituting
one tyrant for another, or a multitude of despots for one.

Wherever a people is fit to be free and to govern itself, and gen-
erously strives to be so, there go all its sympathies. It detests the
tyrant, the lawless oppressor, the military usurper, and him who
abuses a lawful power. It frowns upon cruelty, and a wanton dis-
regard of the rights of humanity. It abhors the selfish employer,
and exerts its influence to lighten the burdens which want and
dependence impose upon the workman, and to foster that human-
ity and kindness which man owes to even his poorest and most
unfortunate brother.

It can never be employed, in any country under Heaven, to teach
a toleration for cruelty, to weaken moral hatred for guilt, or to
deprave and brutalize the human mind. The dread of punish-
ment will never make a Mason an accomplice in so corrupting his
countrymen, and a teacher of depravity and barbarity. If any-
where, as has heretofore happened, a tyrant should send a satirist
on his tyranny to be convicted and punished as a libeller, in a
court of justice, a Mason, if a juror in such a case, though in
sight of the scaffold streaming with the blood of the innocent,
and within hearing of the clash of the bayonets meant to overawe
the court, would rescue the intrepid satirist from the tyrant's
fangs, and send his officers out from the court with defeat and
disgrace.

ELECT OF THE NINE. 155

Even if all law and liberty were trampled under the feet of
Jacobinical demagogues or a military banditti, and great crimes
were perpetrated with a high hand against all who were deservedly
the objects of public veneration ; if the people, overthrowing law,
roared like a sea around the courts of justice, and demanded the
blood of those who, during the temporary fit of insanity and
drunken delirium, had chanced to become odious to it, for true
words manfully spoken, or unpopular acts bravely done, the Ma-
sonic juror, unawed alike by the single or the many-headed tyrant,
would consult the dictates of duty alone, and stand with a noble
firmness between the human tigers and their coveted prey.

The Mason would much rather pass his life hidden in the re-
cesses of the deepest obscurity, feeding his mind even with the
visions and imaginations of good deeds and noble actions, than to
be placed on the most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized
with a denial of the practice of all which can make the greatest
situation any other than the greatest curse. And if he has been
enabled to lend the slightest step to any great and laudable de-
signs ; if he has had any share in any measure giving quiet to pri-
vate property and to private conscience, making lighter the yoke
of poverty and dependence, or relieving deserving men from op-
pression ; if he has aided in securing to his countrymen that best
possession, peace ; if he has joined in reconciling the different sec-
tions of his own country to each other, and the people to the gov-
ernment of their own creating; and in teaching the citizen to
look for his protection to the laws of his country, and for his com-
fort to the good-will of his countrymen ; if he has thus taken
his part with the best of men in the best of their actions,
he may well shut the book, even if he might wish to read a page
or two more. It is enough for his measure. He has not lived
in vain.

Masonry teaches that all power is delegated for the good, and not
for the injury of the People ; and that, when it is perverted from
the original purpose, the compact is broken, and the right ought
to be resumed ; that resistance to power usurped is not merely a
duty which man owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty
which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank
which He gave him in the creation. This principle neither the
rudeness of ignorance can stifle nor the enervation of refinement
extinguish. It makes it base for a man to suffer when he ought

156 MORALS AND DOGMA.

to act ; and, tending to preserve to him the original destinations
of Providence, spurns at the arrogant assumptions of Tyrants and
vindicates the independent quality of the race of which we are a
part.

The wise and well-informed Mason will not fail to be the votary
of Liberty and Justice. He will be ready to exert himself in their
defence, wherever they exist. It cannot be a matter of indiffer-
ence to him when his own liberty and that of other men, with
whose merits and capacities he is acquainted, are involved in the
event of the struggle to be made ; but his attachment will be to
the cause, as the cause of man; and not merely to the country.
Wherever there is a people that understands the value of political
justice, and is prepared to assert it, that is his country; wherever
he can most contribute to the diffusion of these principles and the
real happiness of mankind, that is his country. Nor does he de-
sire for any country any other benefit than justice.

The true Mason identifies the honor of his country with his
own. Nothing more conduces to the beauty and glory of one's
country than the preservation against all enemies of its civil and
religious liberty. The world will rcever willingly let die the names
of those patriots who in her different ages have received upon their
own breasts the blows aimed by insolent enemies at the bosom of
their country.

But also it conduces, and in no small measure, to the beauty and
glory of one's country, that justice should always be administered
there to all alike, and neither denied, sold, nor delayed to any one ;
that the interest of the poor should be looked to, and none starve
or be houseless, or clamor in vain for work ; that the child and the
feeble woman should not be overworked, or even the apprentice or
slave be stinted of food or overtasked or mercilessly scourged ; and
that God's great laws of mercy, humanity, and compassion should
be everywhere enforced, not only by the statutes, but also by the
power of public opinion. And he who labors, often against re-
proach and obloquy, and oftener against indifference and apathy,
to bring about that fortunate condition of things when that great
code of divine law shall be everywhere and punctually obeyed, is
no less a patriot than he who bares his bosom to the hostile steel
in the ranks of his country's soldiery.

For fortitude is not only seen resplendent oh the field of battle
and amid the clash of arms, but he displays its energy under

ELECT OF THE NINE. 157

every difficulty and against every assailant. He who wars against
cruelty, oppression, and hoary abuses, fights for his country's
honor, which these things soil ; and her honor is as important -as
her existence. Often, indeed, the warfare against those abuses
which disgrace one's country is quite as hazardous and more dis-
couraging than that against her enemies in the field; and merits
equal, if not greater reward.

For those Greeks and Romans who are the objects of our admi-
ration employed hardly any other virtue in the extirpation of
tyrants, than that love of liberty, which made them prompt in
seizing the sword, and gave them strength to use it. With facility
they accomplish the undertaking, amid the general shout of
praise and joy ; nor did they engage in the attempt so much as an
enterprise of perilous and doubtful issue, as a contest the most
glorious in which virtue could be signalized ; which infallibly led
to present recompense ; which bound their brows with wreaths of
laurel, and consigned their memories to immortal fame.

But he who assails hoary abuses, regarded perhaps with a super-
stitious reverence, and around which old laws stand as ramparts
and bastions to defend them ; who denounces acts of cruelty and
outrage on humanity which make even' perpetrator thereof his
personal enemy, and perhaps make him looked upon \vith suspi-
cion by the people among whom he lives, as the assailant of an
established order of things of which he assails only the abuses,
and of laws of which he attacks only the violations, — he can
scarcely look for present recompense, nor that his living brows
will be wreathed with laurel. And if, contending against a dark
array of long-received opinions, superstitions, obloquy, and fears,
which most men dread more than they do an army terrible with
banners, the Mason overcomes, and emerges from the contest vic-
torious ; or if he does not conquer, but is borne down and swept
away by the mighty current of prejudice, passion, and interest ;
in either case, the loftiness of spirit which he displays merits for
him more than a mediocrity of fame.

He has already lived too long who has survived the ruin of his
country ; and he who can enjoy life after such an event deserves not
to have lived at all. Xor does he any more deserve to live who looks
contentedly upon abuses that disgrace, and cruelties that dishonor,
and scenes of misery and destitution and brutalization that dis-
figure his country ; or sordid meanness and ignoble revenges that

158 MORALS AND DOGMA.

make her a by-word and a scoff among all generous nations ; and
does not endeavor to remedy or prevent either.

Not often is a country at war ; nor can every one be allowed the
privilege of offering his heart to the enemy's bullets. But in these
patriotic labors of peace, in preventing, remedying, and reforming
evils, oppressions, wrongs, cruelties, and outrages, every Mason
can unite ; and every one can effect something, and share the honor
and glory of the result.

For the cardinal names in the history of the human mind are
few and easily to be counted up; but thousands and tens of
thousands spend their days in the preparations which are to speed
the predestined change, in gathering and amassing the materials
which are to kindle and give light and warmth, when the fire from
Heaven shall have descended on them. Numberless are the sutlers
and pioneers, the engineers and artisans, who attend the march of
intellect. Many move forward in detachments, and level the way
over which the chariot is to pass, and cut down the obstacles that
would impede its progress ; and these too have their reward. If
they labor diligently and faithfully in their calling, not only will
they enjoy that calm contentment which diligence in the lowliest
task never fails to win ; not only will the sweat of their brows be
sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that follows ; but, when the
victory is at last achieved, they will come in for a share in the
glory ; even as the meanest soldier who fought at Marathon or at
King's Mountain became a sharer in the glory of those saving
days ; and within his own household circle, the approbation of
which approaches the nearest to that of an approving conscience,
was looked upon as the representative of all his brother-heroes ;
and could tell such tales as made the tear glisten on the cheek of
his wife, and lit up his boy's eyes with an unwonted sparkling
eagerness. Or, if he fell in the fight, and his place by the fireside
and at the table at home was thereafter vacant, that place was
sacred ; and he was often talked of there in the long winter even-
ings ; and his family was deemed fortunate in the neighborhood,
because it had had a hero in it, who had fallen in defence of his
country.

Remember that life's length is not measured by its hours and
days, but by that which we have done therein for our country and
kind. A useless life is short, if it last a century ; but that of
Alexander was long as the life of the oak, though he died at thir-

ELECT OF THE NINE. 159

ty-five. We may do much in a few years, and we may do nothing
in a lifetime. If we but eat and drink and sleep, and let every-
thing go on around us as it pleases ; or if we live but to amass
wealth or gain office or wear titles, we might as well not have lived
at all ; nor have we any right to expect immortality.

Forget not, therefore, to what you have devoted yourself in this
Degree : defend weakness against strength, the friendless against
the great, the oppressed against the oppressor! Be ever vigilant
and watchful of the interests and honor of your country! and
may the Grand Architect of the Universe give you that strength
and wisdom which shall enable you well and faithfully to perform
these high duties !

X.
ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN.

[Elu of the Fifteen.]

THIS Degree is devoted to the same objects as those of the Elu
of Nine ; and also to the causv* of Toleration and Liberality against
Fanaticism and Persecution, political and religious ; and to that of
Education, Instruction, and Enlightenment against Error, Barbar-
ism, and Ignorance. To these objects you have irrevocably and
forever devoted your hand, your heart, and your intellect ; and
whenever in your presence a Chapter of this Degree is opened, you
will be most solemnly reminded of your vows here taken at the
altar.

Toleration, holding that every other man has the same right to
his opinion and faith that we have to ours; and liberality, holding
that as no human being can with certainty say, in the clash and
conflict of hostile faiths and creeds, what is truth, or that he is
snrcl\ in possession of it, so every one should feel that it is quite
possible that another equally honest and sincere with himself, and
yet holding the contrary opinion, may himself be in possession of
the truth, and that whatever one firmly and conscientiously be-
lieves, is truth, to him — these are the mortal enemies of that fanat-
icism which persecutes for opinion's sake, and initiates crusades
against whatever it, in its imaginary holiness, deems to be contrary
to the law of God or verity of dogma. And education, instruc-
tion, and enlightenment are the most certain means by which
fanaticism and intolerance can be rendered powerless.

No true Mason scoffs ?.t honest convictions .and an ardent zeal
in the cause of what one believes to be truth and justice. But he
160

ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. l6l

does absolutely deny the right of any man to assume the preroga-
tive of Deity, and condemn another's faith and opinions as deserv-
ing to be punished because heretical. Nor does he approve the
course of those who endanger the peace and quiet of great nations,
and the best interest of their own race by indulging in a chimeri-
cal and visionary philanthropy — a luxury which chiefly consists in
drawing their robes around them to avoid contact with their fel-
lows, and proclaiming themselves holier than they.

For he knows that such follies are often more calamitous than
the ambition of kings ; and that intolerance and bigotry have
been infinitely greater curses to mankind than ignorance and error.
Better any error than persecution ! Better any opinion than the
thumb-screw, the rack, and the stake ! And he knows also how
unspeakably absurd it is, for a creature to whom himself and
everything around him are mysteries, to torture and slay others,
because they cannot think as he does in regard to the profoundest
of those mysteries, to understand which is utterly beyond the
comprehension of either the persecutor or the persecuted.

Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious
belief, falsifies and denaturalizes it. The Brahmin, the Jew, the
Mahometan, the Catholic, the Protestant, each professing his pe-
culiar religion, sanctioned by the laws, by time, and by climate,
must needs retain it, and cannot have two religions ; for the social
and sacred laws adapted to the usages, manners, and prejudices of
particular countries, are the work of men.

But Masonry teaches, and has preserved in their purity, the car-
dinal tenets of the old primitive faith, which underlie and are the
foundation of all religions. All that ever existed have had a basis
of truth ; and all have overlaid that truth with errors. The prim-
itive truths taught by the Redeemer wer-e sooner corrupted, and
intermingled and alloyed with fictions than when taught to the
first of our race. Masonry is the universal morality which is suit-
able to the inhabitants of every clime, to the man of every creed.
It has taught no doctrines, except those truths that tend directly
to the well-being of man ; and those who have attempted to direct
it toward useless vengeance, political ends, and Jesuitism, have
merely perverted it to purposes foreign to its pure spirit and real
nature.

Mankind outgrows the sacrifices and the mythologies of the
childhood of the world. Yet it is easy for human indolence to

l62 MORALS AND DOGMA.

linger near these helps, and refuse to pass further on. So the un-
adventurous Nomad in the Tartarian wild keeps his flock in the
same close-cropped circle where they first learned to browse, while
the progressive man roves ever forth "to fresh fields and pastures
new."

The latter is the true Mason ; and the best and indeed the only
good Mason is he who with the power of business does the work of
life; the upright mechanic, merchant, or farmer, the man with
the power of thought, of justice, or of love, he whose whole life
is one great act of performance of Masonic duty. The natural
use of the strength of a strong man or the wisdom of a wise one,
is to do the zvork of a strong man or a wise one. The natural
work of Masonry is practical life ; the use of all the faculties in
their proper spheres, and for their natural function. Love of
Truth, justice, and generosity as attributes of God, must appear in
a life marked by these qualities ; that is the only effectual ordi-
nance of Masonry. A profession of one's convictions, joining the
Order, assuming the obligations, assisting at the ceremonies, are
of the same value in science as in Masonry ; the natural form of
Masonry is goodness, morality, living a true, just, affectionate,
self-faithful life, from the motive of a good man. It is loyal obe-
dience to God's law.

The good Mason does the good thing which comes in his way,
and because it comes in his way; from a love of duty, and not
merely because a law, enacted by man or God, commands his will
to do it. He is true to his mind, his conscience, heart, and soul,
and feels small temptation to do to others what he would not wish
to receive from them. He will deny himself for the sake of his
brother near at hand. His desire attracts in the line of his duty,
both being in conjunction. Not in vain does the poor or the op-
pressed look up to him. You find such men in al! Christian sects,
Protestant and Catholic, in all the great religious parties of the
civilized world, among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews. They
are kind fathers, generous citizens, unimpeachable in their busi-
ness, beautiful in their daily lives. You see their Masonry in their
work and in their play. It appears in all the forms of their ac-
tivity, individual, domestic, social, ecclesiastical, or political. True
Masonry within must be morality without It must become
eminent morality, which is philanthropy. The true Mason loves
not only his kindred and his country, but all mankind ; not only

ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 163

the good, but also the evil, among his brethren. He has more
goodness than the channels of his daily life will hold. It runs
over the banks, to water and to feed a thousand thirsty plants.
Not content with the duty that lies along his track, he goes out to
seek it ; not only willing, he has a salient longing to do good, to
spread his truth, his justice, his generosity, his Masonry over all
the world. His dai-ly life is a profession of his Masonry, published
in perpetual good-will to men. He can not be a persecutor.

Not more naturally does the beaver build or the mocking-bird
sing his own wild, gushing melody, than the true Mason lives in
this beautiful outward life. So from the perennial spring swells
forth the stream, to quicken the meadow with new access of green,
and perfect beauty bursting into bloom. Thus Masonry does the
work it was meant to do. The Mason does not sigh and weep, and
make grimaces. He lives right on. If his life is, as whose is not,
marked with errors, and with sins, he ploughs over the barren
spot with his remorse, sows with new seed, and the old desert blos-
soms like a rose. He is not confined to set forms of thought, of
action, or of feeling. He accepts what his mind regards as true,
what his conscience decides is right, what his heart deems generous
and noble ; and all else he puts far from him. Though the ancient
and the honorable of the Earth bid him bow down to them, his
stubborn knees bend only at the bidding of his manly soul. His
Masonry is his freedom before God, not his bondage unto men. His
mind acts after the universal law of the intellect, his conscience
according to the universal moral law, his affections and his soul
after the universal law of each, and so he is strong with the
strength of God, in this four-fold way communicating with Him.

The old theologies, the philosophies of religion of ancient times,
will not suffice us now. The duties of life are to be done ; we are
to do them, consciously obedient to the law of God, not atheistic-
ally, loving only our selfish gain. There are sins of trade to be
corrected. Everywhere morality and philanthropy are needed.
There are errors to be made way with, and their place supplied
with new truths, radiant with the glories of Heaven. There are
great wrongs and evils, in Church and State, in domestic, social,
and public life, to be righted and outgrown. Masonry cannot in
our age forsake the broad way of life. She must journey on in the
open street, appear in the crowded square, and teach men by her
deeds, her life more eloquent than any lips.

164 MORALS AND DOGMA.

This Degree is chiefly devoted to TOLERATION ; and it inculcates
in the strongest manner that great leading idea of the Ancient
Art. that a belief in the one True God. and a moral and virtuous
life, constitute the only religious requisites needed to enable a man
to be a Mason.

Masonry has ever the most vivid remembrance of the terrible
and artificial tonvients that were used to put down new forms of
religion or extinguish the old. It sees with the eye of memory the
ruthless extermination of all the people of all sexes and ages, be-
cause it was their misfortune not to know the God of the Hebrews,
or to worship Him under the wrong name, by the savage troops of
Moses and Joshua. It sees the thumb-screws and the racks, the
whip, the gallows, and the stake, the victims of Diocletian and
Alva, the miserable Covenanters, the Non-Conformists, Servetus
burned, and the unoffending Quaker hung. It sees Cranmer hold
his arm, now no longer erring, in the flame until the hand drops
off in the consuming heat. It sees the persecutions of Peter and
Paul, the martyrdom of Stephen, the trials of Ignatius, Polycarp,
Justin, and Irenasus ; and then in turn the sufferings of the
wretched Pagans under the Christian Emperors, as of the Papists
in Ireland and under Elizabeth and the bloated Henry. The Ro-
man Virgin naked before the hungry lions ; young Margaret Gra-
ham tied to a stake at low-water mark, and there left to drown,
singing hymns to God until the savage waters broke over her
head ; and all that in all ages have suffered by hunger and naked-
ness, peril and prison, the rack, the stake, and the sword, — it sees
them all, and shudders at the long roll of human atrocities. And
it sees also the oppression still practised in the name of religion —
men shot in a Christian jail in Christian Italy for reading the
Christian Bible ; in almost every Christian State, laws forbidding
freedom of speech on matters relating to Christianity ; and the
gallows reaching its arm over the pulpit.

The fires of Moloch in Syria, the harsh mutilations in the name
of Astarte, Cybele, Jehovah ; the barbarities of imperial Pagan
Torturers ; the still grosser torments which Roman-Gothic Chris-
tians in Italy and Spain heaped on their brother-men ; the fiendish
cruelties to which Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, England,
Scotland, Ireland, America, have been witnesses, are none too pow-
erful to warn man of the unspeakable evils whicfi follow from mis-
takes and errors in the matter of religion, and especially from

ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 165

investing the God of Love with the cruel and vindictive pas-
sions of erring humanity, and making blood to have a sweet
savor in his nostrils, and groans of agony to be delicious to his
ears.

Man never had the right to usurp the unexercised prerogative
of God, and condemn and punish another for his belief. Born in
a Protestant land, we are of that faith. If we had opened our eyes
to the light under the shadows of St. Peter's at Rome, we should
have been devout Catholics ; born in the Jewish quarter of Aleppo,
we should have contemned Christ as an imposter; in Constanti-
nople, we should have cried "Allah il Allah, God is great and Ma-
homet is his prophet!" Birth, place, and education give us our
faith. Few believe in any religion because they have examined
the evidences of its authenticity, and made up a formal judgment,
upon weighing the testimony. Not one man in ten thousand
knows anything about the proofs of his faith. We believe what
we are taught ; and those are most fanatical who know least of the
evidences on which their creed is based. Facts and testimony are
not, except in very rare instances, the ground-wfork of faith. It is
an imperative law of God's Economy, unyielding and inflexible as
Himself, that man shall accept without question the belief of those
among whom he is born and reared ; the faith so made a part of
his nature resists all evidence to the contrary ; and he \vill disbe-
lieve even the evidence of his own senses, rather than yield up the
religious belief which has grown up in him, flesh of his flesh and
bone of his bone.

What is truth to me is not truth to another. The same argu-
ments and evidences that convince one mind make no impression
on another. This difference is in men at their birth. No man is
entitled positively to assert that he is right, where other men,
equally intelligent and equally well-informed, hold directly the
opposite opinion. Each thinks it impossible for the other to be
sincere, and each, as to that, is equally in error. "What is iruth?"
was a profound question, the most suggestive one ever put to man.
Many beliefs of former and present times seem incomprehensible.
They startle us with a new glimpse into the human soul, that mys-
terious thing, more mysterious the more we note its workings.
Here is a man superior to myself in intellect and learning; and
yet he sincerely believes what seems to me too absurd to merit
confutation ; and I cannot conceive, and sincere!}' do not believe,

1 66 MORALS AND DOGMA.

that he is both sane and honest. And yet he is both. His reason
is as perfect as mine, and he is as honest as I.

The fancies of a lunatic are realities, to him. Our dreams are
realities while they last; and, in the Past, no more wnreal than
what we have acted in our waking hours. No man can say that
he hath as sure possession of the truth as of a chattel. When
men entertain opinions diametrically opposed to each other, and
each is honest, who shall decide which hath the Truth ; and how
can either say with certainty that he hath it? We know not
what is the truth. That we ourselves believe and feel absolutely
certain that our own belief is true, is in reality not the slightest
proof of the fact, seem it never so certain and incapable of doubt
to us. No man is responsible for the Tightness of his faith; but
only for the up Tightness of it.

Therefore no man hath or ever had a right to persecute another
for his belief ; for there cannot be two antagonistic rights ; and if
one can persecute another, because he himself is satisfied that the
belief of that other is erroneous, the other has, for the same rea-
son, equally as certain a right to persecute him.

The truth comes to us tinged and colored with our prejudices
and our preconceptions, which are as old as ourselves, and strong
with a divine force. It comes to us as the image of a rod comes to
us through the water, bent and distorted. An argument sinks
into and convinces the mind of one man, while from that of ano-
ther it rebounds like a ball of ivory dropped on marble. It is no
merit in a man to have a particular faith, excellent and sound and
philosophic as it may be, when he imbibed it with his mother's
milk. It is no more a merit than his prejudices and his passions.

The sincere Moslem has as much right to persecute us, as we to
persecute him ; and therefore Masonry wisely requires no more
than a belief in One Great Ail-Powerful Deity, the Father and
Preserver of the Universe. Therefore it is she teaches her votaries
that toleration is one of the chief duties of every good Mason, a
component part of that charity without which we are mere hollow
images of true Masons, mere sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

No evil hath so afflicted the world as intolerance of religious
opinion. The human beings it has slain in various ways, if once
and together brought to life, would make a nation of people ; left
to live and increase, would have doubled the population of the
civilized portion of the globe ; among which civilized portion it

ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 1 67

chiefly is that religious wars are waged. The treasure and the
human labor thus lost would have made the earth a garden, in
which, but for his evil passions, man might now be as happy as in
Eden.

No man truly obeys the Masonic law who merely tolerates
those whose religious opinions are opposed to his own. Every
man's opinions are his own private property, and the rights of all
men to maintain er ch his own are perfectly equal. Merely to tol-
erate, to bear with an opposing opinion, is to assume it to be he-
retical ; and assert the right to persecute, if we would ; and claim
our toleration of :'t as a merit. The Mason's creed goes further
than that. No rr in, it holds, has any right in any way to inter-
fere with the religious belief of another. It holds that each man
is absolutely sovereign as to his own belief, and that belief is a
matter absolutely foreign to all who do not entertain the same
belief ; and that, if there were any right of persecution at all, it
would in all cases be a mutual right; because one party has the
same right as the other to sit as judge in his own case ; and God is
the only magistrate that can rightfully decide between them. To
that great Judge, Masonry refers the matter; and opening wide
its portals, it invites to enter there and live in peace and harmony,
the Protestant, the Catholic, the Jew, the Moslem ; every man
who will lead a truly virtuous and moral life, love his brethren,
minister to the sick and distressed, and believe in the ONE, Ail-
Powerful, All-Wise, everywhere-Present GOD, Architect, Creator,
and Preserver of all things, by whose universal law of Harmony
ever rolls on this universe, the great, vast, infinite circle of suc-
ce-ssive Dea-th and Life : — to whose INEFFABLE NAME let all true
Masons pay profoundest homage ! for whose thousand blessings
poured upon us, let us feel the sincerest gratitude, now, henceforth,
and forever!

We may well be tolerant of each other's creed ; fo-r in every
faith there are excellent moral precepts. Far in the South of
Asia, Zoroaster taught this doctrine: "On commencing a journey,
the Faithful should turn his thoughts toward Ormuzd, and confess
him, in the purity of his heart, to be King of the World; he
should love him, do him homage, and serve him. He must be
upright and charitable, despise the pleasures of the body, and avoid
pride and haughtiness, and vice in all its forms, and especially
falsehood, one of the basest sins of which man can be guilty. He

105 MORALS AND DOGMA.

must forget injuries and not avenge himself. He must honor the
memory of his parents and relatives. At night, before retiring to
sleep, he should rigorously examine his conscience, and repent of
the faults which weakness or ill-fortune had caused him to com-
mit." He was required to pray for strength to persevere in the
Good, and to obtain forgiveness for his errors. It was his duty to
confess his faults to a Magus, or to a layman renowned for his vir-
tues, or to the Sun. Fasting and maceration were prohibited ; and,
on the contrary, it was his duty suitably to nourish the body and
to maintain its vigor, that his soul might be strong to resist the
Genius of Darkness ; that he might more attentively read the
Divine Word, and have more courage to perform noble deeds.

And in the North of Europe the Druids taught devotion to
friends, indulgence for recr- rocal wrongs, love of deserved praise,
prudence, humanity, hospitality, respect for old age, disregard of
the future, temperance, contempt of death, and a chivalrous defer-
ence to woman. Listen to these maxims from the Hava Maal, or
Sublime Book of Odin :

"If thou hast a friend, visit him often ; the path will grow over
with grass, and the trees soon cover it, if thou dost not constantly
walk upon it. He is a faithful friend, who, having but two loaves,
gives his friend one. Be never first to break with thy friend ; sor-
row wrings the heart of him who has no one save himself with
whom to take counsel. There is no virtu©us man who has not
some vice, no bad man who has not some virtue. Happy he who
obtains the praise and good-will of men ; for all that depends on
the will of another is hazardous and uncertain. Riches flit away
in the twinkling of an eye ; they are the most inconstant of
friends ; flocks and herds perish, parents die, friends are not im-
mortal, thou thyself diest; I know but one thing that doth not
die. the judgment that is passed upon the dead. Be humane to-
ward those whom thou meetest on the road. If the. guest that
cometh to thy house is a-cold, give him fire; the man who has
journeyed over the mountains needs food and dry garments. Mock
not at the aged; for words full of sense come often from the
wrinkles of age. Be moderately wise, and not over-prudent. Let
no one seek to know his destiny, if he would sleep tranquilly.
There is no malady more cruel than to be discontented with our
lot. The glutton eats his own death ; and the wise man laughs at
the fool's greediness. Nothing is more injurious to the young than

ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 169

excessive drinking; the more one drinks the more he loses his
reason ; the bird of forgetfulness sings before those who intoxicate
themselves, and wiles away their souls. Man devoid of sense be-
lieves he will live always rf he avoids war ; but, if the lances spare
him, old age will give him no quarter. Better live well than live
long. When a man lights a fire in his house, death comes before
it goes out."

And thus said the Indian books : "Honor thy father and mother.
Never forget the benefits thou hast received. Learn while thou
art young. Be submissive to the laws of thy country. Seek the
company of virtuous men. Speak not of God but with respect.
Live on good terms with thy fellow-citizens. Remain in thy proper
place. Speak ill of no one. Mock at the bodily infirmities of
none. Pursue not unrelentingly a conquered enemy. Strive to
acquire a good reputation. The best bread is that for which one
is indebted to his own labor. Take counsel with wise men. The
more one learns, the more he acquires the faculty of learning.
Knowledge is the most permanent wealth. As well be dumb as
ignorant. The true use of knowledge is to distinguish good from
evil. Be not a subject of shame to thy parents. What one learns
in youth endures like the engraving upon a rock. He is wise who
knows himself. Let thy books be thy best friends. When thou
attainest an hundred years, cease to learn. Wisdom is solidly
planted, even on the shifting ocean. Deceive no one, not even
thine enemy. Wisdom is a treasure that everywhere commands
its value. Speak mildly, even to the poor. It is sweeter to for-
give than to take vengeance. Gaming and quarrels lead to misery.
There is no true merit without the practice of virtue. To honor
our mother is the most fitting homage we can pay the Divinity.
There is no tranquil sleep without a clear conscience. He badly
understands his interest who breaks his word."

Twenty- four centuries ago these were the Chinese Ethics :

"The Philosopher [Confucius] said, 'SAN! my doctrine is sim-
ple, and easy to be understood.' THSENG-TSEU replied, 'that is
certain.' The Philosopher having gone out, the disciples asked
what their master had meant to say. THSENG-TSEU responded,
'The doctrine of our Master consists solely in being upright of
heart, and loving our neighbor as we love ourself.' "

About a century later, the Hebrew law said, "If any man hate
his neighbor . . . then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to

IJO MORALS AND DOGMA.

do unto his brother . . . Better is a neighbor that is near, than a
brother afar off ... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

In the same fifth century before Christ, SOCRATES the Grecian
said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Three generations earlier, ZOROASTER had said to the Persians :
"Offer up thy grateful prayers to the Lord, the most just and pure
Ormuzd, the supreme and adorable God. who thus declared to his
Prophet Zerdusht : 'Hold it not meet to do unto others what thou
wouldst not desire done unto thyself; do that unto the people,
which, when done to thyself, is not disagreeable unto thee.' "

The same doctrine had been long taught in the schools of Bab-
ylon, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. A Pagan declared to the Phar-
isee HILLEL that he was ready to embrace the Jewish religion, if
he could make known to him in a few words a summary of the
whole law of Moses. "That which thou likest not done to thy-
self," said Hillel, "do it not unto thy neighbor. Therein is all the
law : the rest is nothing but the commentary upon it."

"Nothing is more natural," said CONFUCIUS, "nothing more
simple, than the principles of that morality which I endeavor, by
salutary maxims, to inculcate in you ... It is humanity ; which
is to say, that universal charity among all of our species, without
distinction. It is uprightness; that is, that rectitude of spirit
and of heart, which makes one seek for truth in everything, and
desire it, without deceiving one's self or others. It is, finally, sin-
cerity or good faith ; which is to say, that frankness, that open-
ness of heart, tempered by self-reliance, which excludes all feints
and all disguising, as much in speech as in action."

To diffuse useful information, to further intellectual refinement,
sure forerunner of moral improvement, to hasten the coming of
the great day, when the dawn of general knowledge shall chase
away the lazy, lingering mists of ignorance and error, even from
the base of the great social pyramid, is indeed a high calling, in
which the most splendid talents and consummate virtue may well
press onward, eager to bear a part. From the Masonic ranks
ought to go forth those whose genius and not their ancestry enno-
ble them, to open to all ranks the temple of science, and by their
own example to make the humblest men emulous to climb steps
no longer inaccessible, and enter the unfolded gates burning in
the sun.

The highest intellectual cultivation is perfectly compatible with

ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. I/I

the daily cares and toils, of working-men. A keen relish for the
most sublime truths of science belongs alike to every class of
mankind. And, as philosophy was taught in the sacred groves of
Athens, and under the Portico, and in the old Temples of Egypt
and India, so in our Lodges ought Knowledge to be dispensed, the
Sciences taught, and the Lectures become like the teachings of
Socrates and Plato, of Agassiz and Cousin.

Real knowledge never permitted either turbulence or unbelief;
but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened
toleration. Whoso dreads these may well tremble ; for he may be
well assured that their day is at length come, and must put to
speedy flight the evil spirits of tyranny and persecution, which
haunted the long night now gone down the sky. And it is to be
hoped that the time will soon arrive, when, as men will no longer
suffer themselves to be led blindfold in ignorance, so will they no
more yield to the vile principle of judging and treating their fel-
low-creatures, not according to the intrinsic merit of their actions,
but according to the accidental and involuntary coincidence of
their opinions.

Whenever we come to treat with entire respect those who con-
scientiously differ from ourselves, the only practical effect of a dif-
ference will be, to make us enlighten the ignorance on one side or
the other, from which it springs, by instructing them, if it be
theirs ; ourselves, if it be our own ; to the end that the only kind
of unanimity may be produced which is desirable among rational
beings, — the agreement proceeding from full conviction after the
freest discussion.

The Elu of Fifteen ought therefore to take the lead of his fel-
low-citizens, not in frivolous amusements, not in the degrading
pursuits of the ambitious vulgar; but in the truly noble task of
enlightening the mass of his countrymen, and of leaving his own
name encircled, not with barbaric splendor, or attached to courtly
gewgaws, but illustrated by the honors most worthy of our ra-
tional nature ; coupled with the diffusion of knowledge, and grate-
fully pronounced by a few, at least, whom his wise beneficence has
rescued from ignorance and vice.

We say to him, in the words of the great Roman : "Men in no
respect so nearly approach to the Deity, as when they confer bene-
fits on men. To serve and do good to as many as possible, — there
is nothing greater in your fortune than that you should be able,

172 MORALS AND DOGMA.

and nothing finer in your nature, than that you should be desir-
ous to do this." This is the true mark for the aim of every man
and Mason who either prizes the enjoyment of pure happiness, or
sets a right value upon a high and unsullied renown. And if the
benefactors of mankind, when they rest from their noble labors,
shall be permitted to enjoy hereafter, as an appropriate reward of
their virtue, the privilege of looking down upon the blessings with
which their exertions and charities, and perhaps their toils and
sufferings have clothed the scene of their former existence, it will
not, in a state of exalted purity and wisdom, be the founders of
mighty dynasties, the conquerors of new empires, the Caesars,
Alexanders, and Tamerlanes ; nor the mere Kings and Counsel-
lors, Presidents and Senators, who have lived for their party
chiefly, and for their country only incidentally, often sacrificing to
their own aggrandizement or that of their faction the good of their
fellow-creatures ; — it will not be they who will be gratified by con-
templating the monuments of their inglorious fame; but those
will enjoy that delight and march in that triumph, who can trace
the remote effects of their enlightened benevolence in the im-
proved condition of their species, and exult in the reflection, that
the change which they at last, perhaps after many years, survey,
with eyes that age and sorrow can make dim no more, — of Knowl-
edge become Power, — Virtue sharing that Empire, — Superstition
dethroned, and Tyranny exiled, is, if even only in some small and
very slight degree, yet still in some degree, the fruit, precious if
costly, and though late repaid yet long enduring, of their own
self-denial and strenuous exertion, of their own mite of charity
and aid to education wisely bestowed, and of the hardships and
hazards which they encountered here below.

Masonry requires of its Initiates and votaries nothing that is
impracticable. It does not demand that they should undertake
to climb to those lofty and sublime peaks of a theoretical and im-
aginary unpractical virtue, high and cold and remote as the eternal
snows that wrap the shoulders of Chimborazo, and at least as in-
accessible as they. It asks that alone to be done which is easy to
be done. It overtasks no one's strength, and asks no one to go
beyond his means and capacities. It does not expect one whose
business or profession yields him little more than the wants of
himself and his family require, and whose time is necessarily oc-
cupied by his daily vocations, to abandon or neglect the business

ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 173

by which he and his children live, and devote himself and his
means to the diffusion of knowledge among men. It does not ex-
pect him to publish books for the people, or to lecture, to the ruin
of his private affairs, or to found academies and colleges, build up
libraries, and entitle himself to statues.

But it does require and expect every man of us to do something,
within and according to his means ; and there is no Mason who
cannot do some thing, if not alone, then by combination and asso-
ciation.

If a Lodge cannot aid in founding a school or an academy it
can still do something. It can educate one boy or girl, at least,
the child of some poor or departed brother. And it should never
be forgotten, that in the poorest unregarded child that seems
abandoned to ignorance and vice may slumber the virtues of a
Socrates, the intellect of a Bacon or a Bossuet, the genius of a
Shakespeare, the capacity to benefit mankind of a Washington ;
and that in rescuing him from the mire in which he is plunged,
and giving him the means of education and development, the
Lodge that does it may be the direct and immediate means of con-
ferring upon the world as great a boon as that given it by John
Faust the boy of Mentz ; may perpetuate the liberties of a country
and change the destinies of nations, and write a new chapter in
the history of the world.

For we never know the importance of the act we do. The
daughter of Pharaoh little thought what she was doing for the
human race, and the vast unimaginable consequences that de-
pended on her charitable act, when she drew the little child of a
Hebrew woman from among the rushes that grew along the bank
of the Nile, and determined to rear it as if it were her own.

How often has an act of charity, costing the doer little, given
to the world a great painter, a great musician, a great inventor !
How often has such an act developed the ragged boy into the ben-
efactor of his race ! On what small and apparently unimportant
circumstances have turned and hinged the fates of the world's
great conquerors. There is no law thit limits the returns thit
shall be reaped from a single good deed. The widow's mite may
not only be as acceptable to God, but may produce as great results
as the rich man's costly offerinp-. The poorest boy, helped by be-
nevolence, may come to lead armies, to control senates, to decide
on peace and war, to dictate to cabinets ; and his magnificent

174 MORALS AND DOGMA.

thoughts and noble words may be law many years hereafter to mil-
lions of men yet unborn.

But the opportunity to effect a great good does not often occur
to any one. It is worse than folly for one to lie idle and inert, and
expect the accident to befall him, by which his influences shall live
forever. He can expect that to happen, only in consequence of one
or many or all of a long series of acts. He can expect to benefit
the world only as men attain other results; by continuance, by
persistence, by a steady and uniform habit of laboring for the
enlightenment of the world, to the extent of his means and ca-
pacity.

For it is, in all instances, by steady labor, by giving enough of
application to our work, and having enough of time for the doing
of it, by regular pains-taking, and the plying of constant assidui-
ties, and not by any process of legerdemain, that we secure the
strength and the staple of real excellence. It was thus that De-
mosthenes, clause after clause, and sentence after sentence, elabo-
rated to the uttermost his immortal orations. It was thus that
Newton pioneered his way, by the steps of an ascending geometry,
to the mechanism of the Heavens, and Le Verrier added a planet
to our Solar System.

It is a most erroneous opinion that those who have left the most
stupendous monuments of intellect behind them, were not differ-
ently exercised from the rest of the species, but only differently
gifted; that they signalized themselves only by their talent, and
hardly ever by their industry ; for it is in truth to the most stren-
uous application of those commonplace faculties which are dif-
fused among all, that they are indebted for the glories which now
encircle their remembrance and their name.

We must not imagine it to be a vulgarizing of genius, that it
should be lighted up in any other way than by a direct inspiration
from Heaven ; nor overlook the steadfastness of purpose, the devo-
tion to some single but great object, the unweariedness of labor
that is given, not in convulsive and preternatural throes, but by
little and little as the strength of the mind may bear it ; the accu-
mulation of many small efforts, instead of a few grand and gigan-
tic, but perhaps irregular movements, on the part of energies that
are marvellous ; by which former alone the great results are
brought out that write their enduring records on the face of the
earth and in the history of nations and of man.

ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN. 175

We must not overlook these elements, to which genius ®wes the
best and proudest 9f her achievements ; nor imagine that qualities
so generally possessed as patience and pains-taking, and resolute
industry, have no share in upholding a distinction so illustrious
as that of the benefactor of his kind.

We must not forget that great results are most ordinarily pro-
duced by an aggregate of many contributions and exertions ; as it
is the invisible particles of vapor, each separate and distinct from
the other, that, rising from the oceans and their bays and gulfs,
from lakes and rivers, and wide morasses and overflowed plains,
float away as clouds, and distill upon the earth in dews, and fall in
showers and rain and snows upon the broad plains and rude moun-
tains, and make the great navigable streams that are the arteries
along which flows the life-blood of a country.

And so Masonry can do much, if each Mason be content to do
his share, and if their united efforts are directed by wise counsels
to a common purpose. "It is for God and for Omnipotency to do
mighty things in a moment ; but by degrees to grow to greatness
is the course that He hath left for man."

If Masonry will but be true to her mission, and Masons to their
promises and obligations — if, re-entering vigorously upon a career
of beneficence, she and they will but pursue it earnestly and unfal-
teringly, remembering that our contributions to the cause of char-
ity and education then deserve the greatest credit when it costs us
something, the curtailing of a comfort or the relinquishment of a
luxury, to make them — if we will but give aid to what were once
Masonry's great schemes for human improvement, not fitfully and
spasmodically, but regularly and incessantly, as the vapors rise
and the springs run, and as the sun rises and the stars come up
into the heavens, then we may be sure that great results will be
attained and a great work done. And then it will most surely be
seen that Masonry is not effete or impotent, nor degenerated nor
drooping to a fatal decay.

XI.
SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE;

OR

PRINCE AMETH.
[Elu of the Twelve.]

THE duties of a Prince Ameth are, to be earnest, true, reliable,
and sincere ; to protect the people against illegal impositions and
exactions ; to contend for their political rights, and to see, as far as
he may or can, that those bear the burdens who reap the benefits
of the Government.

You are to be true unto all men.

You are to be frank and sincere in all things.

You are to be earnest in doing whatever it is your duty to do.

And no man must repent that he has relied upon your resolve,
your profession, or your word.

The great distinguishing characteristic of a Mason is sympathy
with his kind. He recognizes in the human race one great family,
all connected with himself by those invisible links, and that
mighty net-work of circumstance, forged and woven by God.

Feeling that sympathy, it is his first Masonic duty to serve his
fellow-man. At his first entrance into the Order, he ceases to be
isolated, and becomes one of a great brotherhood, assuming new
duties toward every Mason that lives, as every Mason at the same
moment assumes them toward him.

Nor are those duties on his part confined to Masons alone. He
assumes many in regard to his country, and especially toward the
great, suffering masses of the common people ; for they too are his
brethren, and God hears them, inarticulate as the moanings of
their misery are. By all proper means, of persua'sion and influ-
176

SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE.

ence, and otherwise, if the occasion and emergency require, he is
bound to defend them against oppression, and tyrannical and ille-
gal exactions.

He labors equally to defend and to improve the people. He does
not flatter them to mislead them, nor fawn upon them to rule
them, nor conceal his opinions to humor them, nor tell them that
they can never err, and that their voice is the voice of God. He
knows that the safety of every free government, and its continu-
ance and perpetuity depend upon the virtue and intelligence of
the common people ; and that, unless their liberty is of such a
kind as arms can neither procure nor take away ; unless it is the
fruit of manly courage, of justice, temperance, and generous vir-
tue— unless, being such, it has taken deep root in the minds and
hearts of the people at large, there will not long be wanting those
who will snatch from them by treachery what they have acquired
by arms or institutions.

He knows that if, after being released from the toils of war, the
people neglect the arts of peace ; if their peace and liberty be a
state of warfare; if war be their only virtue, and the summit of
their praise, they will soon find peace the most adverse to their
interests. It will be only a more distressing war ; and that which
they imagined liberty will be the worst of slavery. For, unless by
the means of knowledge and morality, not frothy and loquacious,
but genuine, unadulterated, and sincere, they clear the horizon of
the mind from those mists of error and passion which arise from
ignorance and vice, they will always have those who will bend their
necks to the yoke as if they were brutes ; who, notwithstanding all
their triumphs, will put them up to the highest bidder, as if they
were mere booty made in war; and find an exuberant source of
wealth and power, in the people's ignorance, prejudice, and pas-
sions.

The people that does not subjugate the propensity of the wealthy
to avarice, ambition, and sensuality, expel luxury from them and
their families, keep down pauperism, diffuse knowledge among the
poor, and labor to raise the abject from the mire of vice and low
indulgence, and to keep the industrious from starving in sight of
luxurious festivals, will find that it has cherished, in that avarice,
ambition, sensuality, selfishness, and luxury of the one class, and
that degradation, misery, drunkenness, ignorance, and brutaliza-
tion of the other, more stubborn and intractable despots at home

178 MORALS AND DOGMA.

than it ever encountered in the field ; and even its very bowels will
be continually teeming with the intolerable progeny of tyrants.

These are the first enemies to be subdued ; this constitutes the
campaign of Peace; these are triumphs, difficult indeed, but
bloodless ; and far more honorable than those trophies which are
purchased only by slaughter and rapine ; and if not victors in this
service, it is in vain to have been victorious over the despotic enemy
in the field.

For if any people thinks that it is a grander ; a more benefi-
cial, or a wiser policy, to invent subtle expedients by stamps
and imposts, for increasing the revenue and draining the life-blood
of an impoverished people ; to multiply its naval and military
force ; to rival in craft the ambassadors of foreign states ; to plot
the swallowing up of foreign territory ; to make crafty treaties and
alliances; to rule prostrate states and abject provinces by fear and
force ; than to administer unpolluted justice to the people, to re-
lieve the condition and raise the estate of the toiling masses, redress
the injured and succor the distressed and conciliate the discon-
tented, and speedily restore to every one his own ; then that people
is involved in a cloud of error, and will too late perceive, when the
illusion of these mighty benefits has vanished, that in neglecting
these, which it thought inferior considerations, it has only been
precipitating its own ruin and despair.

Unfortunately, every age presents its own special problem, most
difficult and often impossible to solve ; and that which this age
offers, and forces upon the consideration of all thinking men, is
this — how, in a populous and wealthy country, blessed with free
institutions and a constitutional government, are the great masses
of the manual-labor class to be enabled to have steady work at fair
wages, to be kept from starvation, and their children from vice and
debauchery, and to be furnished with that degree, not of mere
reading and writing, but of knowledge, that shall fit them intelli-
gently to do the duties and exercise the privileges of freemen ;
even to be intrusted with the dangerous right of suffrage?

For though we do not know why God, being infinitely merciful
as well as wise, has so ordered it. it seems to be unquestionably his
law, that even in civilized and Christian countries, the large mass
of the population shall be fortunate, if, during their whole life,
from infancy to old age, in health and sickness, "they have enough
of the commonest and coarsest food to keep themselves and their

SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. 179

children from the continual gnawing of hunger — enough of the
commonest and coarsest clothing to protect themselves and their
little ones from indecent exposure and the bitter cold ; and if they
have over their heads the rudest shelter.

And He seems to have enacted this law — which no human com-
munity has yet found the means to abrogate — that when a country
becomes populous, capital shall concentrate in the hands of a lim-
ited number of persons, and labor become more and more at its
mercy, until mere manual labor, that of the weaver and iron-
worker, and other artisans, eventually ceases to be worth more
than a bare subsistence, and often, in great cities and vast extents
of country, not even that, and goes or crawls about in rags, beg-
ging, and starving for want of work.

While every ox and horse can find work, and is worth being fed,
it is not always so with man. To be employed, to have a chance
to work at anything like fair wages, becomes the great engrossing
object of a man's life. The capitalist can live without employing
the laborer, and discharges him whenever that labor ceases to be
profitable. At the moment when the weather is most inclement,
provisions dearest, and rents highest, he turns him off to starve.
If the day-laborer is taken sick, his wages stop. When old, he has
no pension to retire upon. His children cannot be sent to school ;
for before their bones are hardened they must get to work lest they
starve. The man, strong and able-bodied, works for a shilling or
two a day, and the woman shivering over her little pan of coals,
when the mercury drops far below zero, after her hungry children
have wailed themselves to sleep, sews by the dim light of her lonely
candle, for a bare pittance, selling her life to him who bargained
only for the work of her needle.

Fathers and mothers slay their children, to have the burial-fees,
that with the price of one child's life they may continue life in
those that survive. Little girls with bare feet sweep the street-
crossings, when the winter wind pinches them, and beg piteously
for pennies of those who wear warm furs. Children grow up in
squalid misery and brutal ignorance ; want compels virgin and wife
to prostitute themselves : women starve and freeze, and lean up
against the walls of workhouses, like bundles of foul rags, all night
long, and night after night, when the cold rain falls, and there
chances to be no room for them within ; and hundreds of families
are crowded into a single building, rife with horrors and teeming

!go MORALS AND DOGMA.

with foul air and pestilence; where men, women, and children
huddle together in their filth ; all ages and all colors sleeping in-
discriminately together ; while, in a great, free, Republican State,
in the full vigor of its youth and strength, one person in every
seventeen is a pauper receiving charity.

How to deal with this apparently inevitable evil and mortal dis-
ease is by far the most important of all social problems. What is
to be done with pauperism and over-supply of labor ? How is the
life of any country to last, when brutality and drunken semi-bar-
barism vote, and hold offices in their gift, and by fit representatives
of themselves control a government? How, if not wisdom and
authority, but turbulence and low vice are to exalt to senatorships
miscreants reeking with the odors and pollution of the hell, the
prize-ring-, the brothel, and the stock-exchange, where gambling is
legalized and rascality is laudable?

Masonry will do all in its power, by direct exertion and co-oper-
ation, to improve and inform as well as to protect the people ; to
better their physical condition, relieve their miseries, supply their
wants, and minister to their necessities. Let every Mason in this
good work do all that may be in his power.

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be
free is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate
and just, to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and
brave ; and to be the opposite of all these is the same as to be a
slave. And it usually happens, by the appointment, and, as it
were, retributive justice of the Deity, that that people which can-
not govern themselves, and moderate their passions, but crouch
under the slavery of their lusts and vices, are delivered up to the
sway of those whom they abhor, and made to submit to an invol-
untary servitude.

And it is also sanctioned by the dictates of justice and by the
constitution of Nature, that he who, from the imbecility or de-
rangement of his intellect, is incapable of governing himself,
should, like a minor, be committed to the government of another.

•Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes
one great brotherhood ; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow,
and therefore bound to sympathize with each other.

For no tower of Pride was ever yet high enough to lift its pos-
sessor above the trials and fears and frailties -of humanity. No
human hand ever built the wall, nor ever shall, that will keep out

SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. 1 8 1

affliction, pain, and infirmity. Sickness and sorrow, trouble and
death, are dispensations that level everything. They know none,
high nor low. The chief wants of life, the great and grave necessi-
ties of the human soul, give exemption to none. They make all
poor, all weak. They put supplication in the mouth of every
human being, as truly as in that of the meanest beggar.

But the principle of misery is not an evil principle. We err.
and the consequences teach us wisdom. All elements, all the laws
of things around us, minister to this end ; and through the paths
of painful error and mistake, it is the design of Providence to lead
us to truth and happiness. If erring only taught us to err : if
mistakes confirmed us in imprudence ; if the miseries caused by
vicious indulgence had a natural tendency to make us more abject
slaves of vice, then suffering would be wholly evil. But, on the
contrary, all tends and is designed to produce amendment and im-
provement. Suffering is the discipline of virtue ; of that which is
infinitely better than happiness, and yet embraces in itself all essen-
tial happiness. It nourishes, invigorates, and perfects it. Virtue
is the prize of the severely-contested race and hard-fought battle ;
and it is worth all the fatigue and wounds of the conflict. Man
should go forth with a brave and strong heart, to battle with ca-
lamity. He is to master it, and not let it become his master. He
is not to forsake the post of trial and of peril ; but to stand firmly
in his lot, until the great word of Providence shall bid him fly, or
bid him sink. With resolution and courage the Mason is to do
the work which it is appointed for him to do, looking through the
dark cloud of human calamity, to the end that rises high and
bright bcfc-re him. The lot of sorrow is great and sublime. None
suffer forever, nor for nought, nor without purpose. It is the
ordinance of God's wisdom, and of His Infinite Love, to procure
for us infinite happiness and glory.

Virtue is the truest liberty : nor is he free who stoops to pas-
sions ; nor he in bondage who serves a noble master. Examples
are the best and most lasting lectures ; virtue the best example.
He that hath done good deeds and set good precedents, in sincerity,
is happy. Time shall not outlive his worth. He lives truly after
death, whose good deeds are his pillars of remembrance ; and no day
but adds some grains to his heap of glory. Good works are seeds,
that after sowing return us a continual harvest : and the memory
of noble actions is more enduring than monuments of marble.

1 82 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Life is a school. The world is neither prison nor penitentiary,
nor a palace of ease, nor an amphitheatre for games and specta-
cles ; but a place of instruction, and discipline. Life is given for
moral and spiritual training; and the entire course of the great
school of life is an education for virtue, happiness, and a future
existence. The periods of Life are its terms; all human condi-
tions, its forms ; all human employments, its lessons. Families
are the primary departments of this moral education ; the various
circles of society, its advanced stages; Kingdoms and Republics,
its universities.

Riches and Poverty, Gayeties and Sorrows, Marriages and
Funerals, the ties of life bound or broken, fit and fortunate, or un-
toward and painful, are all lessons. Events are not blindly and
carelessly flung together. Providence does not school one man,
and screen another from the fiery trial of its lessons. It has nei-
ther rich favorites nor poor victims. One event happeneth to all.
One end and one design concern and urge all men.

The prosperous man has been at school. Perhaps he has thought
that it was a great thing, and he a great personage ; but he has
been merely a pupil. He thought, perhaps, that he was Master,
and had nothing to do, but to direct and command ; but there was
ever a Master above him, the Master of Life. He looks not at our
splendid state, or our many pretensions, nor at the aids and appli-
ances of our learning; but at our learning itself. He puts the
poor and the rich upon the same form; and knows.no difference
between them, but their progress.

If from prosperity we have learned moderation, temperance,
candor, modesty, gratitude to God, and generosity to man, then we
are entitled to be honored and rewarded. If we have learned self-
ishness, self-indulgence, wrong-doing, and vice, to forget and
overlook our less fortunate brother, and to scoff at the providence
of God, then we are unworthy and dishonored, though we have
been nursed in affluence, or taken our degrees from the lineage of
an hundred noble descents ; as truly so, in the eye of Heaven, and of
all right-thinking men, as though we lay, victims of beggary and
disease, in the hospital, by the hedge, or on -the dung-hill. The
most ordinary human equity looks not at the school, but at the
scholar; and the equity of Heaven will not-Jook beneath that
mark.

The poor man also is at school. Let him take care that h«

SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. 183

learn, rather than complain. Let him hold to his integrity, his
candor, and his kindness of heart. Let him beware of envy, and
of bondage, and keep his self-respect. The body's toil is nothing.
Let him beware of the mind's drudgery and degradation. While
he betters his condition if he can, let him be more anxious to bet-
ter his soul. Let him be willing, while poor, and even if always
poor, to learn poverty's great lessons, fortitude, cheerfulness, con-
tentment, and implicit confidence in God's Providence. With
these, and patience, calmness, self-command, disinterestedness, and
affectionate kindness, the humble dwelling may be hallowed, and
made more dear and noble than the loftiest palace. Let him,
above all things, see that he lose not his independence. Let him
not cast himself, a creature poorer than the poor, an indolent, help-
less, despised beggar, on the kindness of others. Every man should
choose to have God for his Master, rather than man ; and escape
not from this school, either by dishonesty or alms-taking, lest he
fall into that state, worse than disgrace, where he can have no
respect for himself.

The ties of Society teach us to love one another. That is a mis-
erable society, where the absence of affectionate kindness is sought
to be supplied by punctilious decorum, graceful urbanity, and pol-
ished insincerity ; where ambition, jealousy, and distrust rule, in
place of simplicity, confidence, and kindness.

So, too, the social state teaches modesty and gentleness ; and
from neglect, and notice unworthily bestowed on others, and injus-
tice, and the -world's failure to appreciate us, we learn patience and
quietness, to be superior to society's opinion, not cynical and bit-
ter, but gentle, candid, and affectionate still.

Death is the great Teacher, stern, cold, inexorable, irresistible ;
whom the collected might of the world cannot stay or ward off.
The breath, that parting from the lips of King or beggar, scarcely
stirs the hushed air, cannot be bought, or brought back for a mo-
ment, with the wealth of Empires. What a lesson is this, teach-
ing our frailty and feebleness, and an Infinite Power beyond us !
It is a fearful lesson, that never becomes familiar. It walks through
the earth in dread mystery, and lays its hands upon all. It is a
universal lesson, that is read everywhere and by all men. Its mes-
sage comes every year and every day. The past years are crowded
with its sad and solemn mementoes; and death's finger traces its
handwriting upon the walls of every human habitation.

184 MORALS AND DOGMA.

It teaches us Duty; to act our part well; to fulfill the work as-
signed us. When one is dying, and after he is dead, there is but
one question : Has he lived well? There is no evil in death but
that which life makes.

There are hard lessons in the school of God's Providence; and
yet the school of life is carefully adjusted, in all its arrangements
and tasks, to man's powers and passions. There is no extravagance
in its teachings ; nor is anything done for the sake of present
effect. The whole course of human life is a conflict with difficul-
ties; and, if rightly conducted, a progress in improvement. It is
never too late for man to learn. Not part only, but the whole, of
life is a school. There never comes a time, even amidst the decays
of age, when it is fit to lay aside the eagerness of acquisition, or the
cheerfulness of endeavor. Man walks, all through the course of
life, in patience and strife, and sometimes in darkness ; for, from
patience is to come perfection ; from strife, triumph is to issue ;
from the cloud of darkness the lightning is to flash that shall open
the way to eternity.

Let the Mason be faithful in the school of life, and to all its les-
sons ! Let him not learn nothing, nor care not whether he learns
or not. Let not the years pass over him, witnesses of only his
sloth and indifference ; or see him zealous to acquire everything
but virtue. Nor let him labor only for himself; nor forget that
the humblest man that lives is his brother, and hath a claim on his
sympathies and kind offices ; and that beneath the rough garments
which labor wears may beat hearts as noble as throb under the
stars of princes. *

God, who counts by souls, not stations,

Loves and pities you and me;
For to Him all vain distinctions

Are as pebbles on the sea.

Nor are the other duties inculcated in this Degree of less impor-
tance. Truth, a Mason is early told, is a Divine attribute and the
foundation of every virtue ; and frankness, reliability, sincerity,
straightforwardness, plain-dealing, are but different modes in
which Truth develops itself. The dead, the absent, the innocent,
and those that trust him, no Mason will deceive willingly. To all
these he owes a nobler justice, in that they are the most certain
trials of human Equity. Only the most abandoned of men, said

SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. 185

Cicero, will deceive him, who would have remained uninjured if
he had not trusted. All the noble deeds that have beat their
marches through succeeding ages have proceeded from men of
truth and genuine courage. The man who is always true is both
virtuous and wise; and thus possesses the greatest guards of
safety : for the law has not power to strike the virtuous ; nor can
fortune subvert the wise.

The bases of Masonry being morality and virtue, it is by study-
ing one and practising the other, that the conduct of a Mason be-
comes irreproachable. The good of Humanity being its principal
object, disinterestedness is one of the first virtues that it requires
of its members; for that is the source of justice and benefi-
cence.

To pity the misfortunes of others ; to be humble, but without
meanness; to be proud, but without arrogance; to abjure every
sentiment of hatred and revenge ; to show himself magnanimous
and liberal, without ostentation and without profusion; to be the
enemy of vice ; to pay homage to wisdom and virtue ; to respect
innocence ; to be constant and patient in adversity, and modest in
prosperity ; to avoid every irregularity that stains the soul and dis-
tempers the body — it is by following these precepts that a Mason
will become a good citizen, a faithful husband, a tender father, an
obedient son, and a true brother ; will honor friendship, and fulfill
with ardor the duties which virtue and the social relations impose
upon him.

It is because Masonry imposes upon us these duties that it is
properly and significantly styled zvork; and he who imagines that
he becomes a Mason by merely taking the first two or three De-
grees, and that he may, having leisurely stepped upon that small
elevation, thenceforward worthily wear the honors of Masonry,
without labor or exertion, or self-denial or sacrifice, and that there
is nothing to be done in Masonry, is strangely deceived.

Is it true that nothing remains to be done in. Masonry ?

Does one Brother no longer proceed by law against another
Brother of his Lodge, in regard to matters that could be easily set-
tled within the Masonic family circle?

Has 'the duel, that hideous heritage of barbarism, interdicted
among Brethren by our fundamental laws, and denounced by the
municipal code, yet disappeared .from the soil we inhabit ? Do Ma-
sons of high rank religiously refrain from it ; or do they not, bow-
13

186 MORALS AND DOGMA.

ing to a corrupt public opinion, submit to its arbitrament, despite
the scandal which it occasions to the Order, and in violation of the
feeble restraint of their oath ?

Do Masons no longer form uncharitable opinions of their Breth-
ren, enter harsh judgments against them, and judge themselves by
one rule and their Brethren by another ?

Has Masonry any well-regulated system of charity? Has it
done that which it should have done for the cause of education?
Where are its schools, its academies, its colleges, its hospitals, and
infirmaries?

Are political controversies now conducted with no violence and
bitterness ?

Do Masons refrain from defaming and denouncing their Breth-
ren who differ with them in religious or political opinions ?

What grand social problems or useful projects engage our atten-
tion at our communications? Where in our Lodges are lectures
habitually delivered for the real instruction of the Brethren? Do
not our sessions pass in the discussion of minor matters of busi-
ness, the settlement of points of order and questions of mere
administration, and the admission and advancement of Can-
didates, whom after their admission we take no pains to in-
struct?

i

In what Lodge are our ceremonies explained and elucidated ;
corrupted as they are by time, until their true features can
scarcely be distinguished; and where are those great primi-
tive truths of revelation taught, which Masonry has preserved to
the world?

We have high dignities and sounding titles. Do their possess-
ors qualify themselves to enlighten the world in respect to the
aims and objects of Masonry? Descendants of those Initiates
who governed empires, does your influence enter into practical life
and operate efficiently in behalf of well-regulated and constitu-
tional liberty?

Your debates should be but friendly conversations. You need
concord, union, and peace. Why then do you retain among you
men who excite rivalries and jealousies ; why permit great and
violent controversy and ambitious pretensions? How do your
own words and acts agree? If your Masonry is a nullity, how
can you exercise any influence on others?

Continually you praise each other, and utter elaborate and high-

SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE. l8/

wrought eulogies upon the Order. Everywhere you assume that
you are what you should be, and nowhere do you look upon your-
selves as you are. Is it true that all our actions are so many acts
of homage to virtue ? Explore the recesses of your hearts ; let us
examine ourselves with an impartial eye, and make answer to our
own questioning! Can we bear to ourselves the consoling testi-
mony that we always rigidly perform our duties ; that we even half
perform them?

Let us away with this odious self-flattery ! Let us be men, if we
cannot be sages ! The laws of Masonry, above others excellent,
cannot wholly change men's natures. They enlighten them, they
point out the true way ; but they can lead them in it, only by re-
pressing the fire of their passions, and subjugating their selfish-
ness. Alas, these conquer, and Masonry is forgotten !

After praising each other all our lives, there are always excellent
Brethren, who, over our coffins, shower unlimited eulogies. Every
one of us who dies, however useless his life, has been a model of
all the virtues, a very child of the celestial light. In Egypt,
among our old Masters, where Masonry was more cultivated than
vanity, no one could gain admittance to the sacred asylum of the
tomb until he had passed under the most solemn judgment. A
grave tribunal sat in judgment upon all, even the kings. They
said to the dead, "Whoever thou art, give account to thy country
of thy actions! What hast thou done with thy time and life?
The law interrogates thee, thy country hears thee, Truth sits in
judgment on thee !" Princes came there to be judged, escorted
only by their virtues and their vices. A public accuser recounted
the history of the dead man's life, and threw the blaze of the torch
of truth on all his actions. If it were adjudged that he had led
an evil life, his memory was condemned in the presence of the
nation, and his body was denied the honors of sepulture. What a
lesson the old Masonry taught to the sons of the people !

Is 'it true that Masonry is effete; that the acacia, withered,
affords no shade ; that Masonry no longer marches in the advance-
guard of Truth? No. Is freedom yet universal? Have igno-
rance and prejudice disappeared from the earth? Are there no
longer enmities among men ? Do cupidity and falsehood no longer
exist? Do toleration and harmony prevail among religious and
political sects? There are works yet left for Masonry to accom-
plish, greater than the twelve labors of Hercules ; to advance ever

Io8 MORALS AND DOGMA.

resolutely and steadily; to enlighten the minds of the people, to
reconstruct society, to reform the laws, and to improve the public
morals. The eternity in front of it is as infinite as the one be-
hind. And Masonry cannot cease to labor in the cause of social
progress, without ceasing to be true to itself, without ceasing to be
Masonry.

J,

i.

XII.

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT.

[Master Architect.]

THE great duties that are inculcated by the lessons taught by
the working-instruments of a Grand Master Architect, demanding
so much of us, and taking for granted the capacity to perform
them faithfully and fully, bring us at once to reflect upon the dig-
nity of human nature, and the vast powers and capacities of the
human soul ; and to that theme we invite your attention in this
Degree. Let us begin to rise from earth toward the Stars.

Evermore the human soul struggles toward the light, toward
God, and the Infinite. It is especially so in its afflictions. Words
go but a little way into the depths of sorrow. The thoughts that
writhe there in silence, that go into the stillness of Infinitude and
Eternity, have no emblems. Thoughts enough come there, such
as no tongue ever uttered. They do not so much want human
sympathy, as higher help. There is a loneliness in deep sorrow
which the Deity alone can relieve. Alone, the mind wrestles with
the great problem of calamity, and seeks the solution from the
Infinite Providence of Heaven, and thus is led directly to God.

There are many things in us of which we are not distinctly
conscious. To waken that slumbering consciousness into life, and
so to lead the soul up to the Light, is one office of every great
ministration to human nature, whether its vehicle be the pen, the
pencil, or the tongue. We are unconscious of the intensity and
awfulness of the life within us. Health and sickness, joy and sor-
row, success and disappointment, life and death, love and loss, are

189

IQO MORALS AND DOGMA.

familiar words upon our lips ; and we do not know to what depths
they point within us.

We seem never to know what any thing means or is worth until
we have lost it. Many an organ, nerve, and fibre in our bodily
frame performs its silent part for years, and we are quite uncon-
scious of Hs value. It is not until it is injured that we discover
that value, ai.it find how essential it was to our happiness and com-
fort. We never know the full significance of the words, "prop-
erty," "ease," and "health;" the wealth of meaning in the fond
epithets, "parent," "child," "beloved," and "friend," until the
thing or the person is taken away; until, in place of the bright,
visible being, comes the awful and desolate shadow, where nothing
is: where we stretch out our hands in vain, and strain our eyes
upon dark and dismal vacuity. Yet, in that vacuity, we do not
lose the object that we loved. It becomes only the more real to us.
Our blessings not only brighten when they depart, but are fixed
in enduring reality ; and love and friendship receive their everlast-
ing seal under the cold impress of death.

A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies be-
neath all the commonplace of life. There is an awfulness and a
majesty around us, in all our little worldliness. The rude peasant
from the Apennines, asleep at the foot of a pillar in a majestic
Roman church, seems not to hear or see, but to dream only of the
herd he feeds or the ground he tills in the mountains. But the
choral symphonies fall softly upon his ear, and the gilded arches
are dimly seen through his half-slumbering eyelids.

So the soul, however given up to the occupations of daily life,
cannot quite lose the sense of where it is, and of what is above it
and around it. The scene of its actual engagements may be small ;
the path of its steps, beaten and familiar; the objects it handles,
easily spanned, and quite worn out with daily uses. So it may be,
and amidst such things that we all live. So we live our little life;
but Heaven is above us and all around and close to us ; and Eter-
nity is before us and behind us ; and suns and stars are silent wit-
nesses and watchers over us. We are enfolded by Infinity. Infi-
nite Powers and Infinite spaces lie all around us. The dread arch
of Mystery spreads over us, and no voice ever pierced it. Eternity
is enthroned amid Heaven's myriad starry heights ; and no utter-
ance or word ever came from those far-off and silent spaces.
Above, is that awful majesty ; around us, everywhere, it stretches

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. IQI

off into infinity ; and beneath it is this little struggle of life, this
poor day's conflict, this busy ant-hill of Time.

But from that ant-hill, not only the talk of the streets, the
sounds of music and revelling, the stir and tread of a multitude,
the shout of joy and the shriek of agony go up into the silent and
all-surrounding Infinitude; but also, amidst the stir and noise of
visible life, from the inmost bosom of the visible man, there goes
up an imploring call, a beseeching cry, an asking, unuttered, and
unutterable, for revelation, wailingly and in almost speechless
agony praying the dread arch of mystery to break, and the
stars that roll above the waves of mortal trouble, to speak ;
the enthroned majesty of those awful heights to find a voice;
the mysterious and reserved heavens to come near; and all to
tell us what they alone know ; to give us information of the
loved and lost ; to make known to us what we are, and whither we
are going.

Man is encompassed with a dome of incomprehensible wonders.
In him and about him is that which should fill his life with maj-
esty and sacredness. Something of sublimity and sanctity has
thus flashed down from heaven into the heart of every one that
lives. There is no being so base and abandoned but hath some
traits of that sacredness left upon him ; something, so much per-
haps in discordance with his general repute, that he hides it from
all around him; some sanctuary in his soul, where no one may
enter; some sacred inclosure, where the memory of a child is, or
the image of a venerated parent, or the remembrance of a pure
love, or the echo of some word of kindness once spoken to him ;
an echo that will never die away.

Life is no negative, or superficial or worldly existence. Our
steps are evermore haunted with thoughts, far beyond their own
range, which some have regarded as the reminiscences of a pre-
existent state. So it is with us all, in the beaten and worn track
of this wordlv pilgrimage. There is more here; than the world
we live in. It is not all of life to live. An unseen and infinite
presence is here ; a sense of something greater than we possess ; a
seeking, through all the void wastes of life, for a good beyond it ;
a crying out of the heart for interpretation ; a memory of the
dead, touching continually some vibrating thread in this great tis-
sue of mystery.

We all not only have better intimations, but are capable of bet-

lc)2 MORALS AND DOGMA.

ter things than we know. The pressure of some great emergency
would develop in us powers, beyond the worldly bias of our spir-
its; and Heaven so deals with us, from time to time, as to call
forth those better things. There is hardly a family in the world
so selfish, but that, if one in it were doomed to die — one, to be
selected by the others, — it would be utterly impossible for its mem-
bers, parents and children, to choose out that victim ; but that
each would say, "I will die; but I cannot choose." And in how
many, if that dire extremity had come, would not one and another
step forth, freed from the vile meshes of ordinary selfishness, and
say, like the Roman father and son, "Let the blow fall on me !"
There are greater and better things in us all, than the world takes
account of, or than we take note of; if we would but find them
out. And it is one pait of our Masonic culture to find these traits
of power and sublime devotion, to revive these faded impressions
of generosity and self-sacrifice, the almost squandered bequests of
God's love and kindness to our souls ; and to induce us to yield
ourselves to their guidance and control.

Upon all conditions of men presses down one impartial law. To
all situations, to all fortunes, high or low, the mind gives their
character. They are, in effect, not what they are in themselves,
but what they are to the feeling of their possessors. The King
may be mean, degraded, miserable ; the slave of ambition, fear,
voluptuousness, and every low passion. The Peasant may be the
real Monarch, the moral master of his fate, a free and lofty being,
more than a Prince in happiness, more than a King in honor.

Man is no bubble upon the sea of his fortunes, helpless and
irresponsible upon the tide of events. Out of the same circum-
stances, different men bring totally different results. The same
difficulty, distress, poverty, or misfortune, that breaks down one
man, builds up another and makes him strong. It is the very attri-
bute and glory of a man, that he can bend the circumstances of
his condition to the intellectual and moral purposes of his nature,
and it is the power and mastery of his will that chiefly distinguish
him from the brute.

The faculty of moral will, developed in the child, is a new ele-
ment of his nature. It is a new power brought upon the scene,
and a ruling power, delegated from Heaven. Never was a human
being sunk so low that he had not, by God's gift, the power to rise.
Because God commands him to rise, it is certain that he can rise.

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 193

Every man has the power, and should use it, to make all situations,
trials, and temptations instruments to promote his virtue and hap-
piness ; and is so far from being the creature of circumstances,
that he creates and controls them, making them to be all that they
are, of evil or of good, to him as a moral being.

Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The
eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon
the same creation ; but very different are the aspects which it bears
to them. To the one, it is all beauty and gladness ; the waves of
ocean roll in light, and the mountains are covered with day. Life,
to him, flashes, rejoicing, upon every flower and every tree that
trembles in the breeze. There is more to him, everywhere, than
the eye sees ; a presence of profound joy on hill and valley, and
bright, dancing water. The other idly or mournfully gazes at the
same scene, and even-thing wears a dull, dim, and sickly aspect.
The murmuring of the brooks is a discord to him, the great roar of
the sea has an angry and threatening emphasis, the solemn music
of the pines sings the requiem of his departed happiness, the
cheerful light shines garishly upon his eyes and offends him. The
great train of the seasons passes before him like a funeral proces-
sion ; and he sighs, and turns impatiently away. The eye makes
that which it looks upon ; the ear makes its own melodies and
discords ; the world without reflects the \vorld within.

Let the Mason never forget that life and the world are what we
make them by our social character ; by our adaptation, or want of
adaptation to the social conditions, relationships, and pursuits of
the world. To the selfish, the cold, and the insensible, to the
haughty and presuming, to the proud, who demand more than
they are likely to receive, to the jealous, ever afraid they shall not
receive enough, to those who are unreasonably sensitive about the
good or ill opinions of others, to all violators of the social laws,
the rude, the violent, the dishonest, and the sensual,^-to all these,
the social condition, from its very nature, will present annoyances,
disappointments, and pains, appropriate to their several charac-
ters. The benevolent affections will not revolve around selfish-
ness ; the cold-hearted must expect to meet coldness ; the proud,
haughtiness ; the passionate, anger ; and the violent, rudeness.
Those who forget the rights of others, must not be surprised if
their own are forgotten ; and those who stoop to the lowest em-
braces of sense must not wonder, if others are not concerned to

IQ4 MORALS AND DOGMA.

find their prostrate honor, and lift it up to the remembrance and
respect of the world.

To the gentle, many will be gentle ; to the kind, many will be
kind. A good man will find that there is goodness in the world ;
an honest man will find that there is honesty in the world ; and a
man of principle will find principle and integrity in the minds of
others.

There are no blessings which the mind may not convert into the
bitterest of evils ; and no trials which it may not transform into
the noblest and divinest blessings. There are no temptations from
which assailed virtue may not gain strength, instead of falling be-
fore them, vanquished and subdued. It is true that temptations
have a great power, and virtue often falls ; but the might of these
temptations lies not in themselves, but in the feebleness of our
own virtue, and the weakness of our own hearts. We rely too
much on the strength of our ramparts and bastions, and allow the
enemy to make his approaches, by trench and parallel, at his lei-
sure. The offer of dishonest gain and guilty pleasure makes the
honest man more honest, and the pure man more pure. They
raise his virtue to the height of towering indignation. The fair
occasion, the safe opportunity, the tempting chance become the
defeat and disgrace of the tempter. The honest and upright man
does not wait until temptation has made its approaches and
mounted its batteries on the last parallel.

But to the impure, the dishonest, the false-hearted, the corrupt,
and the sensual, occasions come every day, and in every scene, and
through every avenue of thought and imagination. He is pre-
pared to capitulate before the first approach is commenced ; and
sends out the white flag when the enemy's advance comes in sight
of his walls. He makes occasions ; or, if opportunities come not,
evil thoughts come, and he throws wide open the gates of his heart
and welcomes those bad visitors, and entertains them with a lavish
hospitality.

The business of the world absorbs, corrupts, ar,d degrades one
mind, while in another it feeds and nurses the noblest independ-
ence, integrity, and generosity. Pleasure is a -poison to some, and
a healthful refreshment to others. To one, the world is a great
harmony, like a noble strain of music vvith infinite modulations ;
to another, it is a huge factory, the riash and clang of whose ma-
chitrery jars'upon-his ears and fre'.s him to madness. Life is sub-

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 195

stantially the same thing to all who partake of its lot. Yet some
rise to virtue aad glory ; while others, undergoing the same disci-
pline, and enjoying the same privileges, sink to shame and per-
dition.

Thorough, faithful, and honest endeavor to improve, is always
successful, and the highest happiness. To sigh sentimentally over
human misfortune, is fit only for the mind's childhood ; and the
mind's misery is chiefly its own fault; appointed, under the good
Providence of God, as the punisher and corrector of its fault. In
the long run, the mind will be happy, just in proportion to its
fidelity and wisdom. When it is miserable, it has planted the
thorns in its own path ; it grasps them, and cries out in loud com-
plaint ; and that complaint is but the louder confession that the
thorns which grew there, it planted.

A certain kind and degree of spirituality enter into the largest
part of even the most ordinary life. You can carry on no busi-
ness, without some faith in man. You cannot even dig in the
ground, without a reliance on the unseen result. You cannot
think or reason or even step, without confiding in the inward,
spiritual principles of your nature. All the affections and bonds,
and hopes and interests of life centre in the spiritual ; and you
know that if that central bond were broken, the wrorld would rush
to chaos.

Believe that there is a God ; that He is our father ; that He has
a paternal interest in our welfare and improvement; that He has
given us powers, by means of which we may escape from sin and
ruin ; that He has destined us to a future life of endless progress
toward perfection and a knowledge of Himself — believe this, as
every Mason should, and you can live calmly, endure patiently,
labor resolutely, deny yourselves cheerfully, hope steadfastly, and
be conquerors in the great struggle of life. Take away any one
of these principles, and what remains for us? Say that there is
no God ; or no way opened for hope and reformation and triumph,
no heaven to come, no rest for the weary, no home in the bosom
of God for the afflicted and disconsolate soul ; or that God is but
an ugly blind Chance that stabs in the dark; or a somewhat that
is, when attempted to be defined, a /zovrhat, emotionless, passion-
less, the Supreme Apathy to which all things, good and evil, are
alike indifferent : or a jealous God who revengefully visits the sins
of the fathers on the children, and when the fathers have eaten

196 MORALS AND DOGMA.

sour grapes, sets the children's teeth on edge ; an arbitrary su-
preme Will, that has made it right to be virtuous, and wrong to
lie and steal, because IT pleased to make it so rather than other-
wise, retaining the power to reverse the law ; or a fickle, vacillat-
ing, inconstant Deity, or a cruel, bloodthirsty, savage Hebrew or
Puritanic one; and we are but the sport of chance and the vic-
tims of despair; hapless wanderers upon the face of a desolate,
forsaken, or accursed and hated earth; surrounded by darkness,
struggling with obstacles, toiling for barren results and empty pur-
poses, distracted with doubts, and misled by false gleams of light ;
wanderers with no way, no prospect, no home; doomed and de-
serted mariners on a dark and stormy sea, without compass or
course, to whom no stars appear; tossing helmless upon the wel-
tering, angry waves, with no blessed haven in the distance whose
guiding-star invites us to its welcome rest.

The religiou? faith thus taught by Masonry is indispensable to
the attainment of the great ends of life ; and must therefore have
been designed to be a part of it. We are made for this faith ; and
there must be something, somewhere, for us to believe in. We
cannot grow heakh fully, nor live happily, without it. It is there-
fore true. If we could cut off from any soul all the principles
taught by Masonry, the faith in a God, in immortality, in virtue,
in essential rectitude, that soul would sink into sin, misery, dark-
ness, and ruin. If we could cut off all sense of these truths, the
man would sink at once to the grade of the animal.

No man can suffer and be patient, can struggle and conquer, can
improve and be happy, otherwise than as the swine are, without
conscience, without hope, without a reliance on a just, wise, and
beneficent God. We must, of necessity, embrace the great truths
taught by Masonry, and live by them, to live happily. "I put my
trust in God," is the protest of Masonry against the belief in a
cruel, angry, and revengeful God, to be feared and not reverenced
by His creatures.

Society, in its great relations, is as much the creation of Heaven
as is the system of the Universe. If that bond of gravitation
that holds all worlds and systems together, were suddenly severed,
the universe would fly into wild and boundless chaos. And ii we
were to sever all the moral bonds that hold society together ; if we
could cut off from it every conviction of Trutn and Integrity, of
an authority above it, and of a conscience within it, it would im-

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. IQ7

mediately rush to disorder and frightful anarchy and ruin. The
religion we teach is therefore as really a principle of things, and
as certain and true, as gravitation.

Faith in moral principles, in virtue, and in God, is as necessary
for the guidance of a man, as instinct is for the guidance of an ani-
mal. And therefore this faith, as a principle of man's nature, has
a mission ac truly authentic in God's Providence, as the principle
of instinct. The pleasures of the soul, too, must depend on cer-
tain principles. They must recognize a soul, its properties and
responsibilities, a conscience, and the sense of an authority above
us; and these are the principles of faith. No man can suffer and
be patient, can struggle and conquer, can improve and be happy,
without conscience, without hope, without a reliance on a just,
wise, and beneficent God. We must of necessity embrace the
great truths taught by Masonry, and live by them, to live happily.
Everything in the universe has fixed and certain law^ and prin-
ciples for its action ; — the star in its orbit, the animal in its activ-
ity, the physical man in his functions. And he has likewise fixed
and certain laws and principles as a spiritual being. His soul does
not die for want of aliment or guidance. For the rational soul
there is ample provision. From the lofty pine, rocked in the dark-
ening tempest, the cry of the young raven is heard ; and it would
be most strange if there were no answer for the cry and call of the
soul, tortured by want and sorrow and agony. The total rejection
of all moral and religious belief would strike out a principle from
human nature, as essential to it as gravitation to the stars, in-
stinct to animal life, the circulation of the blood to the human
body.

God has ordained that life shall be a social state. We are mem-
bers of a civil community. The life of that community depends
upon its meral condition. Public spirit, intelligence, uprightness,
temperance, kindness, domestic purity, will make it a happy com-
munity, and give it prosperity and continuance. Wide-spread self-
ishness, dishonesty, intemperance, libertinism, corruption, and
crime, will make it miserable, and bring about dissolution and
speedy ruin. A whole people lives one life ; one mighty heart
heaves in its bosom ; it is one great pulse of existence that throbs
there. One stream of life flows there, with ten thousand inter-
mingled branches and channels, through all the homes of human
love. One sound as of many waters, a rapturous jubilee or a

198 MORALS AND DOGMA.

mournful sighing, comes up from the congregated dwellings of a
whole nation.

The Public is no vague abstraction; nor should that which is
done against that Public, against public interest, law, or virtue,
press but lightly on the conscience. It is but a vast expansion of
individual life; an ocean of tears, an atmosphere of sighs, or a
great whole of joy and gladness. It suffers with the suffering of
millions; it rejoices with the joy of millions. What a vast crime
does he commit, — private man or public man, agent or contractor,
legislator or magistrate, secretary or president, — who dares, with
indignity and wrong, to strike the bosom of the Public Welfare, to
encourage venality and corruption, and shameful sale of the elec-
tive franchise, or of office; to sow dissension, and to weaken the
bonds of amity that bind a Nation together! What a huge ini-
quity, he who, with vices like the daggers of a parricide, dares to
pierce that mighty heart, in which the ocean of existence is flow-
ing!

What an unequalled interest lies in the virtue of every one whom
we love ! In his virtue, nowhere but in his virtue, is garnered up
the incomparable treasure. What care we for brother or friend,
compared with what we care for his honor, his fidelity, his reputa-
tion, his kindness? How venerable is the rectitude of a parent!
How sacred his reputation ! No blight that can fall upon a child,
is like a parent's dishonor. Heathen or Christian, every parent
would have his child do well ; and pours out upon him all the full-
ness of parental love, in the one desire that he may do well ; that
he may be worthy of his cares, and his freely bestowed pains ; that
he may walk in the way of honor and happiness. In that way he
cannot walk one step without virtue. Such is life, in its relation-
ships. A thousand ties embrace it, like the fine nerves of a deli-
cate organization ; like the strings of an instrument capable of
sweet melodies, but easily put out of tune or broken, by rudeness,
anger, and selfish indulgence.

If life could, by any process, be made insensible to pain and
pleasure ; if the human heart were hard as adamant, then avarice,
ambition, and sensuality might channel out their paths in it, and
make it their beaten way ; and none would wonder or protest. If
we could be patient under the load of a mere, worldly life ; if we
could bear that burden as the beasts bear it ; then, like beasts, we
might bend all our thoughts to the earth ; and no call from the

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. IQO,

great Heavens above us would startle us from our plodding and
earthly course.

But we are not insensible brutes, who can refuse the call of rea-
son and conscience. The soul is capable of remorse. When the
great dispensations of life press down upon us, we weep, and suffer
and sorrow. And sorrow and agony desire other companionships
than worldliness and irreligion. We are not willing to bear those
burdens of the heart, fear, anxiety, disappointment, and trouble,
without any object or use. We are not willing to suffer, to be sick
and afflicted, to have our days and months lost to comfort and joy,
and overshadowed with calamity and grief, without advantage or
compensation ; to barter away the dearest treasures, the very suf-
ferings, of the heart; to sell the life-blood from failing frame and
fading cheek, our tears of bitterness and groans of anguish, for
nothing. Human nature, frail, feeling, sensitive, and sorrowing,
cannot bear to suffer for nought.

Everywhere, human life is a great and solemn dispensation.
Man, suffering, enjoying, loving, hating, hoping, and fearing,
chained to the earth and yet exploring the far recesses of the uni-
verse, has the power to commune with God and His angels.
Around this great action of existence the curtains of Time are
drawn ; but there are openings through them which give us
glimpses of eternity. God looks down upon this scene of human
probation. The wise and the good in all ages have interposed for
it, with their teachings and their blood. Everything that exists
around us, every movement in nature, every counsel of Provi-
dence, every interposition of God, centres upon one point — the
fidelity of man. And even if the ghosts of the departed and re-
membered could come at midnight through the barred doors of
our dwellings, and the shrouded dead should glide through the
aisles of our churches and sit in our Masonic Temples, their teach-
ings would be no more eloquent and impressive than the dread
realities of life; than those memories of misspent years, those
ghosts of departed opportunities, that, pointing to our conscience
and eternity, cry continually in our ears, "Work while the
day lasts! for the night of death cometh, in which no man can
ivork."

There are no tokens of public mourning for the calamity of the
soul. Men weep when the body dies ; and when it is borne to its
last rest, they follow it with sad and mournful procession. But

2OO MORALS AND DOGMA.

for the dying soul, there is no open lamentation ; for the lost soul
there are no obsequies.

And yet the mind and soul of man have a value which nothing
else has. They are worth a care which nothing else is worth ; and
to the single, solitary individual, they ought to possess an interest
which nothing else possesses. The stored treasures of the heart,
the unfathomable mines that are in the soul to be wrought, the
broad and boundless realms of Thought, the freighted argosy of
man's hopes and best affections, are brighter than gold and dearer
than treasure.

And yet the mind is in reality little known or considered. It is
all which man permanently is, his inward being, his divine energy,
his immortal thought, his boundless capacity, his infinite aspira-
tion ; and nevertheless, few value it for what it is worth. Few see
a brother-mind in others, through the rags with which poverty
has clothed it, beneath the crushing burdens of life, amidst the
close pressure of worldly troubles, wants and sorrows. Few
acknowledge and cheer it in that humble lot, and feel that
the nobility of earth, and the commencing glory of Heaven are
there.

Men do not feel the worth of their own souls. They are proud
of their mental powers ; but the intrinsic, inner, infinite worth of
their own minds they do not perceive. The poor man, admitted
to a palace, feels, lofty and immortal being as he is, like a mere
ordinary thing amid the splendors that surround him. He sees the
carriage of wealth roll by him, and forgets the intrinsic and eter-
nal dignity of his own mind in a poor and degrading envy, and
feels as an humbler creature, because others are above him, not in
mind, but in mensuration. Men respect themselves, according as
they are more wealthy, higher in rank or office, loftier in the
world's opinion, able to command more votes, more the favorites
of the people or of Power.

The difference among men is not so much in their nature and
intrinsic power, as in the faculty of communication. Some have
the capacity of uttering and embodying in words their thoughts.
All men, more or less, feel those thoughts. The glory of genius
and the rapture of virtue, when rightly revealed, are diffused and
shared among unnumbered minds. When eloquence and poetry
speak ; when those glorious arts, statuary, painting, and music,
take audible or visible shape ; when patriotism, charity, and virtue

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 2OI

speak with a thrilling potency, the hearts of thousands glow with
a kindred joy and ecstasy. If it were not so. there would be no
eloquence ; for eloquence is that to which other hearts respond ; it
is the faculty and power of making other hearts respond. No one
is so low or degraded, as not sometimes to be touched with the
beauty of goodness. No heart is made of materials so common,
or even base, as not sometimes to respond, through every chord of
it, to the call of honor, patriotism, generosity, and virtue. The
poor African Slave will die for the master or mistress, or in de-
fence of the children, whom he loves. The poor, lost, scorned,
abandoned, outcast woman will, without expectation of reward,
nurse those who are dying on every hand, utter strangers to her,
with a contagious and horrid pestilence. The pickpocket will
scale burning walls to rescue child or woman, unknown to him,
from the ravenous flames.

Most glorious is this capacity ! A power to commune with God
and His Angels ; a reflection of the Uncreated Light ; a mirror
that can collect and concentrate upon itself all the moral splen-
dors of the Universe. It is the soul alone that gives any value to
the things of this world ; and it is only by raising the soul to its
just elevation above all other things, that wre can look rightly
upon the purposes of this earth. No sceptre nor throne, nor struc-
ture of ages, nor broad empire, can compare with the wonders and
grandeurs of a single thought. That alone, of all things that
have been made, comprehends the Maker of all. That alone is
the key which unlocks all the treasures of the Universe; the
power that reigns over Space, Time, and Eternity. That, under
God, is the Sovereign Dispenser to man of all the blessings and
glories that lie within the compass of possession, or the range of
possibility. Virtue. Heaven, and Immortality exist not, nor ever
will exist for us except as they exist and will exist, in the percep-
tion, feeling, and thought of the glorious mind.

My Brother, in the hope that you have listened to and under-
stood the Instruction and Lecture of this Degree, and that you
feel the dignity of your own nature and the vast capacities of your
own soul for good or evil, I proceed briefly to communicate to you
the remaining instruction of this Degree.

The Hebrew word, in the old Hebrew and Samaritan character,
suspended in the East, over the five columns, is ADONAI, one of
the names of God, usually translated Lord; and which the He-
14

2O2 MORALS AND DOGMA.

bi ews, in reading, always substitute for the True Name, which is
for them ineffable.

The five columns, in the five different orders of architecture, are
emblematical to us of the five principal divisions of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite :

i. — The Tuscan, of the three blue Degrees, or the primitive
Masonry.

2. — The Doric, of the ineffable Degrees, from the fourth to the
fourteenth, inclusive.

3. — The Ionic, of the fifteenth and sixteenth, or second temple
Degrees.

4. — The Corinthian, of the seventeenth and eighteenth Degrees,
or those of the new law.

5. — The Composite, of the philosophical and chivalric Degrees
intermingled, from the nineteenth to the thirty-second, in-
clusive.

The North Star, always fixed and immutable for us, represents
the point in the centre of the circle, or the Deity in the centre of
the Universe. It is the especial symbol of duty and of faith. To
it, and the seven that continually revolve around it, mystical
meanings are attached, which you will learn hereafter, if you
should be permitted to advance, when you are made acquainted
with the philosophical doctrines of the Hebrews.

The Morning Star, rising in the East, Jupiter, called by the
Hebrews Tsadoc or Tsydyk, Just, is an emblem to us of the ever-
approaching dawn of perfection and Masonic light.

The three great lights of the Lodge are symbols to us of the
Power, Wisdom, and Beneficence of the Deity. They are also
symbols of the first three Sephiroth, or Emanations of the Deity,
according to the Kabalah, K ether, the omnipotent divine will;
Chochmah, the divine intellectual power to generate thought, and
Binah, the divine intellectual capacity to produce it — the two lat-
ter, usually translated Wisdom and Understanding, being the
active and the passive, the positive and the negative, which we do
not yet endeavor to explain to you. They are the columns Jachin
and Boaz, that stand at the entrance to the Masonic Temple.

In another aspect of this Degree, the Chief of the Architects
[D^2 31, Rab Banaim,] symbolizes the constitutional executive
head and chief of a free government ; and the Degree teaches us
that no free government can long endure, when the people cease

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT. 203

to select for their magistrates the best and the wisest of their
statesmen ; when, passing these by, they permit factions or sordid
interests to select for them the small, the low, the ignoble, and the
obscure, and into such hands commit the country's destinies.
There is, after all, a "divine right" to govern; and it is vested in
the ablest, wisest, best, of every nation. "Counsel is mine, and
sound wisdom : I am understanding : I am power : by me kings
do reign, and princes decree justice; by me princes rule, and
nobles, even all the magistrates of the earth."

For the present, my Brother, let this suffice. We welcome you
among us, to this peaceful retreat of virtue, to a participation in
our privileges, to a share in our joys and our sorrows.

XIII.

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON.

WHETHER the legend and history of this Degree are historically
true, or but an allegory, containing in itself a deeper truth and a
pro founder meaning, we shall not now debate. If it be but a
legendary myth, you must find out for yourself what it means. It
is certain that the word which the Hebrews are not now permitted
to pronounce was in common use by Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Jacob,
Laban, Rebecca, and even among tribes foreign to the Hebrews,
before the time of Moses; and that it recurs a hundred times in
the lyrical effusions of David and other Hebrew poets.

We know that for many centuries the Hebrews have been for.-
bidclen to pronounce the Sacred Name ; that wherever it occurs,
they have for ages read the word Adonai instead ; and that under
n. when the masoretic points, which represent the vowels, came to
be used, they placed those which belonged to the latter word.
The possession of the true pronunciation was deemed to confer on
him who had it extraordinary and supernatural powers ; and the
Word itself, worn upon the person, was regarded as an amulet, a
protection against personal danger, sickness, and evil spirits. We
know that all this was a vain superstition, natural to a rude peo-
ple, necessarily disappearing as the intellect of man became en-
lightened ; and wholly unworthy of a Mason.

It is noticeable that this notion of the sanctity of the Divine

Name or Creative Word was common to all the ancient nations.

The Sacred Word HOM was supposed by the ancjent Persians (who

were among the earliest emigrants from Northern India) to be

204

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 2O5

pregnant with a mysteiious power; and they taught that by its
utterance the world was created. In India it was forbidden to
pronounce the word AUM or OM, the Sacred Name of the One
Deity, manifested as Brahma, Vishna, and Seeva.

These superstitious notions in regard to the efficacy of the Word,
and the prohibition against pronouncing it, could, being errors,
have formed no part of the pure primitive religion, or of the
esoteric doctrine taught by Moses, and the full knowledge of which
was confined to the Initiates ; unless the whole was but an ingeni-
ous invention for the concealment of some other Name or truth,
the interpretation and meaning whereof was made known only to
the select few. If so, the common notions in regard to the Word
grew up in the minds of the people, like other errors and fables
among all the ancient nations, out of original truths and symbols
and allegories misunderstood. So it has always been that allego-
ries, intended as vehicles of truth, to be understood by the sages,
have become or bred errors, by being literally accepted.

It is true, that before the masoretic points were invented (which
was after the beginning of the Christian era), the pronunciation
of a word in the Hebrew language could not be known from the
characters in which it was written. It was, therefore, possible for
that of the name of the Deity to have been forgotten and lost. It
is certain that its true pronunciation is not that represented by the
word Jehovah ; and therefore that that is not the true name of
Deity, nor the Ineffable Word.

The ancient symbols and allegories always had more than one
interpretation. They always had a double meaning, and sometimes
more than two, one serving as the envelope of the other. Thus
the pronunciation of the word was a symbol ; and that pronuncia-
tion and the word itself were lost, when the knowledge of the true
nature and attributes of God faded out of the minds of the Jewish
people. That is one interpretation — true, but not the inner and
profoundest one.

Men were figuratively said to forget the name of God, when they
lost that knowledge, and worshipped the heathen deities, and
burned incense to them on the high places, and passed their chil-
dren through the fire to Moloch.

Thus the attempts of the ancient Israelites and of the Initiates
to ascertain the True Name of the Deity, and its pronounciation,
and the loss of the True Word, are an allegory, in which are rep-

2O6 MORALS AND DOGMA.

resented the general ignorance of the true nature and attributes
of God, the proneness of the people of Judah and Israel to wor-
ship other deities, and their low and erroneous and dishonoring
notions of the Grand Architect of the Universe, which all shared
except a few favored persons ; for even Solomon built altars and
sacrificed to Astarat, the goddess of the Tsidunim, and Malcum,
the Aamunite god, and built high places for Kamus, the Moabite
deity, and Malec the god of the Beni-Aamun. The true nature of
God was unknown to them, like His name; and they worshipped
the calves of Jeroboam, as in the desert they did that made for
them by Aarun.

The mass of the Hebrews did not believe in the existence of one
only God until a late period in their history. Their early and
popular ideas of the Deity were singularly low and unworthy.
Even while Moses was receiving the law upon Mount Sinai, they
forced Aarun to make them an image of the Egyptian god Apis,
and fell down and adored it. They were ever ready to return to
the worship of the gods of the Mitzraim ; and soon after the death
of Joshua they became devout worshippers of the false gods of all
the surrounding nations. "Ye have borne," Amos, the prophet,
said to them, speaking of their forty years' journeying in the des-
ert, under Moses, "the tabernacle of your Malec and Kaiun your
idols, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves."

Among them, as among other nations, the conceptions of God
formed by individuals varied according to their intellectual and
spiritual capacities ; poor and imperfect, and investing God with
the commonest and coarsest attributes of humanity, among the
ignorant and coarse ; pure and lofty among the virtuous and richly
gifted. These conceptions gradually improved and became puri-
fied and ennobled, as the nation advanced in civilization — being
lowest in the historical books, amended in the prophetic writings,
and reaching their highest elevation among the poets.

Among all the ancient nations there was one faith and one
idea of Deity for the enlightened, intelligent, and educated, and
another for the common people. To this rule the Hebrews were no
exception. Yehovah, to the mass of the people, was like the gods
of the nations around them, except that he was the peculiar God,
first of the family of Abraham, of that of Isaac, and of that of
Jacob, and afterward the Nationa1 God ; and, as they believed,
more powerful than the other gode of the same nature worshipped

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 207

by their neighbors — "Who among the Baalim is like unto thee, O
Yehovah ?" — expressed their whole creed.

The Deity of the early Hebrews talked to Adam and Eve in the
garden of delight, as he walked in it in the cool of the day; he
conversed with Kayin ; he sat and ate with Abraham in his tent ;
that patriarch required a visible token, before he would believe in
his positive promise ; he permitted Abraham to expostulate with
him, and to induce him to change his first determination in regard
to Sodom ; he wrestled with Jacob ; he showed Moses his person,
though not his face; he dictated the minutest police regulations
and the dimensions of the tabernacle and its furniture, to the
Israelites; he insisted on and delighted in sacrifices and burnt-
offerings ; he was angry, jealous, and revengeful, as well as waver-
ing and irresolute ; he allowed Moses to reason him out of his
fixed resolution utterly to destroy his people ; he commanded the
performance of the most shocking and hideous acts of cruelty and
barbarity. He hardened the heart of Pharaoh ; he repented of
the evil that he had said he would do unto the people of Nineveh ;
and he did it not, to the disgust and anger of Jonah.

Such were the popular notions of the Deity ; and either the
priests had none better, or took little trouble to correct these no-
tions ; or the popular intellect was not enough enlarged to enable
them to entertain any higher conceptions of the Almighty.

But such were not the ideas of the intellectual and enlightened
few among the Hebrews. It is certain that they possessed a
knowledge of the true nature and attributes of God ; as the same
class of men did among the other nations — Zoroaster, Menu, Con-
fucius, Socrates, and Plato. But their doctrines on this subject
were esoteric ; they did not communicate them to the people at
large, but only to a favored few ; and as they were communicated
in Egypt and India, in Persia and Phoenicia, in Greece and Samo-
thrace, in the greater mysteries, to the Initiates.

The communication of this knowledge and other secrets, some
of which are perhaps lost, constituted, under other names, what
we now call Masonry, or Free or Frank-Masonry. That knowl-
edge was, in one sense, the Lost Word, which was made known to
the Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Masons. It would be folly
to pretend that the forms of Masonry were the same in those ages
as they are now. The present name of the Order, and its titles,
and the names of the Degrees now in use, were not then known.

2O8 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Even Blue Masonry cannot trace back its authentic history, with
its present Degrees, further than the year 1700, if so far. But, by
whatever name it was known in this or the other country, Masonry
existed as it now exists, the same in spirit and at heart, not only
when Solomon builded the temple, but centuries before — before
even the first colonies emigrated into Southern India, Persia, and
Egypt, from the cradle of the human race.

The Supreme, Self-existent, Eternal, All-wise, All-powerful, In-
finitely Good, Pitying, Beneficent, and Merciful Creator and Pre-
server of the Universe was the same, by whatever name he was
called, to the intellectual and enlightened men of all nations. The
name was nothing, if not a symbol and representative hieroglyph
of his nature and attributes. The name AL represented his
remoteness above men, his inaccessibility; BAL and BALA, his
might; ALOHIM, his various potencies; IHUH, existence and the
generation of things. None of his names, among the Orientals,
were the symbols of a divinely infinite love and tenderness, and
all-embracing mercy. As MOLOCH or MALEK he was but an
omnipotent monarch, a tremendous and irresponsible Will; as
ADONAI, only an arbitrary LORD and Master; as AL Shaddi,
potent and a DESTROYER.

To communicate true and correct ideas in respect of the Deity
was one chief object of the mysteries. In them, Khurum the
King, and Khurum the Master, obtained their knowledge of him
and his attributes; and in them that knowledge was taught to
Moses and Pythagoras.

Wherefore nothing forbids you to consider the whole legend of
this Degree, like that of the Master's, an allegory, representing the
perpetuation of the knowledge of the True God in the sanctuaries
of initiation. By the subterranean vaults you may understand
the places of initiation, which in the ancient ceremonies were gen-
erally under ground. The Temple ef Solomon presented a sym-
bolic image of the Universe ; and resembled, in its arrangements
and furniture, all the temples of the ancient nations that practised
the mysteries. The system of numbers was intimately connected
with their religions and worship, and has come down to us in Ma-
sonry ; though the esoteric meaning with which the numbers used
by us are pregnant is unknown to the vast majority of those who
use them. Those numbers were especially employed that had a
reference to the Deity, represented his attributes, or figured in the

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 2OQ

frame-work of the world, in time and space, and formed more or
less the bases of that frame-work. These were universally re-
garded as sacred, being the expression of order and intelligence,
the utterances of Divinity Himself.

The Holy of Holies of the Temple formed a cube ; in which,
drawn on a plane surface, there are 4 + 3 + 2 = 9 lines visible,
and three sides or faces. It corresponded with the number four,
by which the ancients presented Nature, it being the number of
substances or corporeal forms, and of the elements, the cardinal
points and seasons, and the secondary colors. The number three
everywhere represented the Supreme Being. Hence the name of
the Deity, engraven upon the triangular plate, and that sunken
into the cube of agate, taught the ancient Mason, and teaches us,
that the true knowledge of God, of His nature and His attributes,
is written by Him upon the leaves of the great Book of Universal
Nature, and may be read there by all who are endowed with the
requisite amount of intellect and intelligence. This knowledge
of God, so written there, and of which Masonry has in all ages
been the interpreter, is the Master Mason's Word.

Within the Temple, all the arrangements were mystically and
symbolically connected with the same system. The vault or ceil-
ing, starred like the firmament, was supported by twelve columns,
representing the twelve months of the year. The border that ran
around the columns represented the zodiac, and one of the twelve
celestial signs was appropriated to each column. The brazen sea
was supported by twelve oxen, three looking to each cardinal point
of the compass.

And so in our day every Masonic Lodge represents the Uni-
verse. Each extends, we are told, from the rising to the setting
sun. from the South to the North, from the surface of the Earth
to the Heavens, and from the same to the centre of the globe. In
it are represented the sun, moon, and stars ; three great torches in
the East, West, and South, forming a triangle, give it light ; and,
like the Delta or Triangle suspended in the East, and inclosing the
Ineffable Name, indicate, by the mathematical equality of the
angles and sides, the beautiful and harmonious proportions which
govern in the aggregate and details of the Universe ; while those
sides and angles represent, by their number, three, the Trinity of
Power, Wisdom, and Harmony, which presided at the building of
this marvellous work. These three great lights also represent the

2TO MORALS AND DOGMA.

great mystery of the three principles, of creation, dissolution or
destruction, and reproduction or regeneration, consecrated by all
creeds in their numerous Trinities.

The luminous pedestal, lighted by the perpetual flame within, is
a symbol of that light of Reason, given by God to man, by which
he is enabled to read in the Bock of Nature the record of the
thought, the revelation of the attributes of the Deity.

The three Masters, Adoniram, Joabert, and Stolkin, are types
of the True Mason, who seeks for knowledge from pure motives,
and that he may be the better enabled to serve and benefit his fel-
low-men ; while the discontented and presumptuous Masters who
were buried in the ruins of the arches represent those who strive
to acquire it for unholy purposes, to gain power over their fellows,
to gratify their pride, their vanity, or their ambition.

The Lion that guarded the Ark and held in his mouth the key
wherewith to open it, figuratively represents Solomon, the Lion of
the Tribe of Judah, who preserved and communicated the key to
the true knowledge of God, of His laws, and of the profound mys-
teries of the moral and physical Universe.

ENOCH ["pjn, Khanoc], we are told, walked with God three
hundred years, after reaching the age of sixty-five — "walked with
God, and he was no more, for God had taken him." His name
signified in the Hebrew, INITIATE or INITIATOR. The legend of
the columns, of granite and brass or bronze, erected by him, is
probably symbolical. That of bronze, which survived the flood, is
supposed to symbolize the mysteries, of which Masonry is the legit-
imate successor — from the earliest times the custodian and depos-
i^ory of the great philosophical and religious truths, unknown to
the world at large, and handed down from age to age by an un-
broken current of tradition, embodied in Symbols, emblems, and
allegories.

The legend of this Degree is thus, partially, interpreted. It is of
little importance whether it is in anywise historical. For its value
consists in the lessons which it inculcates, and the duties which it
prescribes to those who receive it. The parables and allegories of
the Scriptures are not less valuable than history. Nay, they are
more so, because ancient history is little instructive, and truths are
concealed in and symbolized by the legend and the myth.

There are profounder meanings concealed m the symbols of this
Degree, connected with the philosophical system of the Hebrew

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 211

Kabalists, which you will learn hereafter, if you should be so
fortunate as to advance. They are unfolded in the higher De-
grees. The lion [S"1K, <T*X, Arai, Araiah, which also means the
altar] still holds in his mouth the key of the enigma of the
sphynx.

But there is one application of this Degree, that you are now
entitled to know ; and which, remembering that Khurum, the Mas-
ter, is the symbol of human freedom, you would probably discover
for yourself.

It is not enough for a people to gain its liberty. It must secure
it. It must not intrust it to the keeping, or hold it at the pleasure,
of any one man. The keystone of the Royal Arch of the great
Temple of Liberty is a fundamental law, charter, or constitution :
the expression of the fixed habits of thought of the people, em-
bodied in a written instrument, or the result of the slow accre-
tions and the consolidation of centuries ; the same in war as in
peace ; that cannot be hastily changed, nor be violated with impu-
nity, but is sacred, like the Ark of the Covenant of God, which
none could touch and live.

A permanent constitution, rooted in the affections, expressing
the will and judgment, and built upon the instincts and settled
habits of thought of the people, with an independent judiciary, an
elective legislature of two branches, an executive responsible to
the people, and the right of trial by jury, will guarantee the liber-
ties of a people, if it be virtuous and temperate, without luxury,
and without the lust of conquest and dominion, and the follies of
visionary theories of impossible perfection.

Masonry teaches its Initiates that the pursuits and occupations
of this life, its activity, care, and ingenuity, the predestined devel-
opments of the nature given us by God, tend to promote His great
design, in making the world ; and are not at war with the great
purpose of life. It teaches that everything is beautiful in its
time, in its place, in its appointed office ; that everything which
man is put to do, if rightly and faithfully done, naturally helps to
work out his salvation ; that if he obeys the genuine principles of
his calling, he will be a good man : and that it is only by neglect
and non-performance of the task set for him by Heaven, by wan-
. dering into idle dissipation, or by violating their beneficent and
lofty spirit, that he becomes a bad man. The appointed action of
life is the great training of Providence ; and if man yields himself

212 MORALS AND DOGMA.

to it, he will need neither churches nor ordinances, except for the
expression of his religious homage and gratitude.

For there is a religion of toil. It is not all drudgery, a mere
stretching of the limbs and straining of the sinews to tasks. It
has a meaning and an intent. A living heart pours life-blood into
the toiling arm ; and warm affections inspire and mingle with
man's labors. They are the home affections. Labor toils a-field,
or plies its task in cities, or urges the keels of commerce over wide
oceans; but home is its centre; and thither it ever goes with its
earnings, with the means of support and comfort for others ; offer-
ings sacred to the thought of every true man, as a sacrifice at a
golden shrine. Many faults there are amidst the toils of life ;
many harsh and hasty words are uttered; but still the toils go
on, weary and hard and exasperating as they often are. For in
that home is age or sickness, or helpless infancy, or gentle child-
hood, or feeble woman, that must not want. If man had no other
than mere selfish impulses, the scene of labor which we behold
around us would not exist.

The advocate who fairly and honestly presents his case, with a
feeling of true self-respect, honor, and conscience, to help the tri-
bunal on toward the right conclusion, with a conviction that God's
justice reigns there, is acting a religious part, leading that day a
religious life; or else right and justice are "no part of religion.
Whether, during all that day, he has once appealed, in form or in
terms, to his conscience, or not; whether he has once spoken of
religion and God, or not; if there has been the inward purpose,
the conscious intent and desire, that sacred justice should tri-
umph, he has that day led a good and religions life, and made a
most essential contribution to that religion of life and of society,
the cause of equity between man and man, and of truth and right
action in the world.

Books, to be of religious tendency in the Masonic sense, need
not be books of sermons, of pious exercises, or of prayers. What-
ever inculcates pure, noble, and patriotic sentiments, or touches
the heart with the beauty of virtue, and the excellence of an up-
right life, accords with the religion of Masonry, and is the Gospel
of literature and art. That Gospel is preached from many a book
and painting, from many a poem and fiction, and review and news-
paper ; and it is a painful error and miserable* narrowness, not to
recognize these wide-spread agencies of Heaven's providing ; not

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 213

to see and welcome these many-handed coadjutors, to the great
and good cause. The oracles of God do not speak from the pulpit
alone.

There is also a religion of society. In business, there is much
more than sale, exchange, price, payment ; for there is the sacred
faith of man in man. When we repose perfect confidence in the
integrity of another; when we feel that he will not swerve from
the right, frank, straightforward, conscientious course, for any
temptation; his integrity and conscientiousness are the image of
God to us ; and when we believe in it, it is as great and generous
an act, as when we believe in the rectitude of the Deity.

In gay assemblies for amusement, the good affections of life gush
and mingle. If they did not, these gathering-places would be as
dreary and repulsive as the caves and dens of outlaws and robbers.
When friends meet, and hands are warmly pressed, and the eye
kindles and the countenance is suffused with gladness, there is a
religion between their hearts ; and each loves and worships the
True and Good that is in the other. It is not policy, or self-inter-
est, or selfishness that spreads such a charm around that meeting,
but the halo of bright and beautiful affection.

The same splendor of kindly liking, and affectionate regard,
shines like the soft overarching sky, over all the world ; over all
places where men meet, and walk or toil together ; not over lovers'
bowers and marriage-altars alone, not over the homes of purity
and tenderness alone ; but over all tilled fields, and busy work-
shops, and dusty highways, and paved streets. There is not a
worn stone upon the sidewalks, but has been the altar of such
offerings of mutual kindness ; nor a wooden pillar or iron railing
against which hearts beating with affection have not leaned. How
many soever other elements there are in the stream of life flowing
through these channels, that is surely here and everywhere ; hon-
est, heartfelt, disinterested, inexpressible affection.

Every Masonic Lodge is a temple of religion ; and its teachings
are instruction in religion. For here are inculcated disinterested-
ness, affection, toleration, devotedness, patriotism, truth, a generous
sympathy with those who suffer and mourn, pity for the fallen,
mercy for the erring, relief for those in want, Faith, Hope, and
Charity. Here we meet as brethren, to learn to know and love
each other. Here we greet each other gladly, are lenient to each
other's faults, regardful of each other's feelings, ready to relieve

214 MORALS AND DOGMA.

each other's wants. This is the true religion revealed to the an-
cient patriarchs ; which Masonry has taught for many centuries,
and which it will continue to teach as long as time endures. If
unworthy passions, or selfish, bitter, or revengeful feelings, con-
tempt, dislike, hatred, enter here, they are intruders and not wel-
come, strangers uninvited, and not guests.

Certainly there are many evils and bad passions, and much hate
and contempt and unkindness everywhere in the world. We can-
not refuse to see the evil -that is in life. But all is not evil. We
still see God in the world. There is good amidst the evil. The
hand of mercy leads wealth to the hovels of poverty and sorrow.
Truth and simplicity live amid many wiles and sophistries. There
are good hearts underneath gay robes, and under tattered gar-
ments also.

Love clasps the hand of love, amid all the envyings and dis-
tractions of showy competition ; fidelity, pity, and sympathy hold
the long night-watch by the bedside of the suffering neighbor,
amidst the surrounding poverty and squalid misery. Devoted
men go from city to city to nurse those smitten down by the terri-
ble pestilence that renews at intervals its mysterious marches.
Women well-born and delicately nurtured nursed the wounded
soldiers in hospitals, before it became fashionable to do so; and
even poor lost women, whom God alone loves and pities, tend the
plague-stricken with a patient and generous heroism. Masonry
and its kindred Orders teach men to love each other, feed the hun-
gry, clothe the naked, comfort the sick, and bury the friendless
dead. Everywhere God finds and blesses the kindly office, the
pitying thought, and the loving heart.

There is an element of good in all men's lawful pursuits and a
• divine spirit breathing in all their lawful affections. The ground
on which they tread is holy ground. There is a natural religion
of life, answering, with however many a broken tone, to the reli-
gion of nature. There is a beauty and glory in Humanity, in man,
answering, with however many a mingling shade, to the loveliness
of soft landscapes, and swelling hills, and the wondrous glory of
the starry heavens.

Men may be virtuous, self-improving, and religious in their em-
ployments. Precisely for that, those employments were made. All
their social relations, friendship, love, the ties of family, were made
to be holy. They may be religious, not by a kind of protest and

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON.

resistance against their several vocations ; but by conformity to
their true spirit. Those vocations do not exclude religion ; but de-
mand it, for their own perfection. They may be religious laborers,
whether in field or factory; religious physicians, lawyers, sculp-
tors, poets, painters, and musicians. They may be religious in all
the toils and in all the amusements of life. Their life may be a
religion ; the broad earth its altar ; its incense the very breath of
life ; its fires ever kindled by the brightness of Heaven.

Bound up with our poor, frail life, is the mighty thought that
spurns the narrow span of all visible existence. Ever the soul
reaches outward, and asks for freedom. It looks forth from the
narrow and grated windows of sense, upon the wide immeasurable
creation ; it knows that around it and beyond it lie outstretched
the infinite and everlasting paths.

Everything within us and without us ought to stir our minds to
admiration and wonder. We are a mystery encompassed with
mysteries. The connection of mind with matter is a mystery ;
the wonderful telegraphic communication between the brain and
every part of the body, the power and action of the will. Ev-
ery familiar step is more than a story in a land of enchantment.
The power of movement is as mysterious as the power of thought.
Memory, and dreams that are the indistinct echoes of dead mem-
ories are alike inexplicable. Universal harmony springs from in-
finite complication. The momentum of every step we take in our
dwelling contributes in part to the order of the Universe. We
are connected by ties of thought, and. even of matter and its forces,
with the whole boundless Universe and all the past and coming
generations of men.

The humblest object beneath our eye as completely defies
our scrutiny as the economy of the most distant star. Every
leaf and every blade of grass holds within itself secrets
which no human penetration will ever fathom. No man can
tell what is its principle of life. No man can know what his power
of secretion is. Both are inscrutable mysteries. Wherever we
place our hand, we lay it upon the locked bosom of mystery. Step
where we will, we tread upon wonders. The sea-sands, the clods
of the field, the water -worn pebbles on the hills, the rude masses
of rock, are traced over and over, in every direction, with a hand-
writing older and more significant and sublime than all the ancient
ruins, and all the overthrown and buried cities that past genera-

2l6 MORALS AND DOGMA.

tions have left upon the earth ; for it is the handwriting of the
Almighty.

A Mason's great business with life is to read the book of its
teaching; to find that life is not the doing of drudgeries, but the
bearing of oracles. The old mythology is but a leaf in that book ;
for it peopled the world with spiritual natures; and science,
many-leaved, still spreads before us the same tale of wonder.

We shall be just as happy hereafter, as we are pure and upright,
and no more, just as happy as our character prepares us to be, and
no more. Our moral, like our mental character, is not formed in
a moment ; it is the habit of our minds ; the result of many
thoughts and feelings and efforts, bound togther by many natural
and strong ties. The great law of Retribution is, that all coming
experience is to be affected by every present feeling ; every future
moment of being must answer for every present moment ; one
moment, sacrificed to vice, or lost to improvement, is forever sacri-
ficed and lost ; an hour's delay to enter the right path, is to put us
back so far, in the everlasting- pursuit of happiness ; and every
sin, even of the best men, is to be thus answered for, if not accord-
ing to the full measure of its ill-desert, yet according to a rule of
unbending rectitude and impartiality.

The law of retribution presses upon every man, whether he
thinks of it or not. It pursues him through all the courses of
life, with a step that never falters nor tires, and with an eye that
never sleeps. If it were not so, God's government would not be
impartial ; there would be no discrimination ; no moral dominion ;
no light shed upon the mysteries of Providence.

Whatsoever a man soweth, that, and not something else, shall
he reap. That which we are doing, good or evil, grave or gay ;
that which we do to-day and shall do to-morrow ; each thought,
each feeling, each action, each event ; every passing hour, every
breathing moment ; all are contributing to form the character,
according to which we are to be judged. Every particle of influ-
ence that goes to form that aggregate, — our character, — will, in
that future scrutiny, be sifted out from the mass ; and, particle by
particle, with ages perhaps intervening, fall a distinct contribu-
tion to the sum of our joys or woes. Thus every idle word and
idle hour will give answer in the judgment.

Let us take care, therefore, what we sow. "An evil temptation
comes upon us ; the opportunity of unrighteous gain, or of unhal-

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON. 2l/

lowed indulgence, either in the sphere of business cr pleasure,
of society or solitude. We yield ; and plant a seed of bitterness
and sorrow. To-morrow it will threaten discovery. Agitated and
alarmed, we cover the sin, and bury it deep in falsehood and hy-
pocrisy. In the bosom where it lies concealed, in the fertile soil
of kindred vices, that sin dies not, but thrives and grows ; and
other and still other germs of evil gather around the accursed
root ; until, from that single seed of corruption, there springs up
in the soul all that is horrible in habitual lying, knavery, or vice.
Loathingly, often, we take each downward step; but a frightful
power urges us onward ; and the hell of debt, disease, ignominy,
or remorse gathers its shadows around our steps even on earth ;
and are yet but the beginnings of sorrows. The evil deed may be
done in a single moment ; but conscience never dies, memory never
sleeps ; guilt never can become innocence ; and remorse can never
whisper peace.

Beware, thou who art tempted to evil ! Beware what thou
layest up for the future ! Beware what thou layest up in the
archives of eternity ! Wrong .not thy neighbor ! lest the thought
of him thou injurest, and who suffers by thy act, be to thee a pang
which years will not deprive of its bitterness ! Break not into the
house of innocence, to rifle it of its treasure ; lest when many
years have passed over thee, the moan of its distress may not have
died away from thine ear ! Build not the desolate throne of ambi-
tion in thy heart; nor be busy with devices, and circumventing^,
and selfish schemings ; lest desolation and loneliness be on thy
path, as it stretches into the long futurity ! Live not a useless,
an impious, or an injurious life ! for bound up with that life is the
immutable principle of an endless retribution, and elements of
God's creating, which will never spend their force, but continue
ever to unfold with the ages of eternity. Be not deceived ! God
has formed thy nature, thus to answer to the future. His law
can never be abrogated, nor His justice eluded ; and forever and
ever it will be true, that "Whatsoever a man soweth, that also he
shall reap."

15

XIV.

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME

MASON.

[Perfect Elu.]

IT is for each individual Mason to discover the secret of Ma-
sonry, by reflection upon its symbols and n wise consideration and
analysis of what is said and done in the work. Masonry does not
inculcate her truths. She states them, once and briefly ; or hints
them, perhaps, darkly; or interposes a cloud between them and
eyes that would be dazzled by them. "Seek, and ye shall find,"
knowledge and the truth.

The practical object of Masonry is the physical and moral
amelioration and the intellectual and spiritual improvement of
individuals and society. Neither can be effected, except by the
dissemination of truth. It is falsehood in doctrines and fallacy
in principles, to which most of the miseries of men and the mis-
fortunes of nations are owing. Public opinion is rarely right on
any point ; and there are and always will be important truths to
be substituted in that opinion in the place of many errors and
absurd and injurious prejudices. There are few truths that public
opinion has not at some time hated and persecuted as heresies;
and few errors that have not at some time seemed to it truths radi-
ant from the immediate presence of God. There are moral mala-
dies, also, of man and society, the treatment of which requires not
only boldness, but also, and more, prudence and discretion ; since
they are more the fruit of false and pernicious doctrines, moral,
political, and religious, than of vicious inclinations.

Much of the Masonic secret manifests itself, without speech
218

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON.

revealing it, to him who even partially comprehends all the De-
grees in proportion as he receives them ; and particularly to those
who advance to the highest Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite. That Rite raises a corner of the veil, even in the
Degree of Apprentice ; for it there declares that Masonry is a

Masonry labors to improve the social order by enlightening
men's minds, warming their hearts with the love of the good, in-
spiring them with the great principle of human fraternity, and
requiring of its disciples that their language and actions shall con-
form to that principle, that they shall enlighten each other, con-
trol their passions, abhor vice, and pity the vicious man as one
afflicted with a deplorable malady.

It is the universal, eternal, immutable religion, such as God
planted it in the heart of universal humanity. Xo creed has ever
been long-lived that was not built on this foundation. It is the
base, and they are the superstructure. "Pure religion and unde-
filed before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and
widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the
world." "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the
bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the
oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?" The ministers
of this religion are all Masons who comprehend it and are devoted
to it ; its sacrifices to God are good works, the sacrifices of the
base and disorderly passions, the offering up of self-interest on the
altar of humanity, and perpetual efforts to attain to all the moral
perfection of which man is capable.

To make honor and duty the steady beacon-lights that shall
guide your life-vessel over the stormy seas of time; to do that
which it is right to do, not because it will insure you success, or
bring with it a reward, or gain the applause of men, or be "the
best policy," more prudent or more advisable; but because it is
right, and therefore ought to be done; to war incessantly against
error, intolerance, ignorance, and vice, and yet to pity those who
err, to be tolerant even of intolerance, to teach the ignorant, and
to labor to reclaim the vicious, are some of the duties of a Mason.

A good Mason is one that can look upon death, and see its face
with the same countenance with which he hears its story; that
can endure all the labors of his life with his soul supporting his
body, that can equally despise riches when he hath them and

22O MORALS AND DOGMA.

when he hath them not ; that is not sadder if they are in his neigh-
bor's exchequer, nor more lifted up if they shine around about his
own walls ; one that is not moved with good fortune coming to
him, nor going from him; that can look upon another man's lands
with equanimity and pleasure, as if they were his own ; and yet
look upon his own, and use them too, just as if they were another
man's ; that neither spends his goods prodigally and foolishly, nor
yet keeps them avariciously and like a miser ; that weighs not ben-
efits by weight and number, but by the mind and circumstances
of him who confers them; that never thinks his charity expen-
sive, if a worthy person be the receiver; that does nothing for
opinion's sake, but everything for conscience, being as careful of
his thoughts as of his acting in markets and theatres, and in as
much awe of himself as of a whole assembly ; that is bountiful
and cheerful to his friends, and charitable and apt to forgive his
enemies ; that loves his country, consults its honor, and obeys its
laws, and desires and endeavors nothing more than that he may
do his duty and honor God. And such a Mason may reckon his
life to be the life of a man, and compute his months, not by
the course of the sun, but by the zodiac and circle of his vir-
tues.

The whole world is but one republic, of which each nation is a
family, and every individual a child. Masonry, not in anywise
derogating from the differing duties which the diversity of states
requires, tends to create a new people, which, composed of men of
many nations and tongues, shall all be bound together by the
bonds of science, morality, and virtue.

Essentially philanthropic, philosophical, and progressive, it ha5
for the basis of its dogma a firm belief in the existence of God
and his providence, and of the immortality of the soul ; for its
object, the dissemination of moral, political, philosophical, and
religious truth, and the practice of all the virtues. In every age,
its device has been, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," with constitu-
tional government, law, order, discipline, and subordination to
legitimate authority — government and not anarchy.

But it is n-.ither a political party nor a religious sect. It em-
braces all parties and all sects, to form from among them all a vast
fraternal association. It recognizes the dignity of human nature,
and man's right to such freedom as he is fitted for: and it
knows nothing that should place one man below another, except

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. .. 221

ignorance, debasement, and crime, and the necessity of subordina-
tion to lawful will and authority.

It is philanthropic; for it recognizes the great truth that all
men are of the same origin, have common interests, and should
co-operate together to the same end.

Therefore it teaches its members to love one another, to give to
each other mutual assistance and support in all the circumstances
of life, to share each other's pains and sorrows, as well as their joys
and pleasures ; to guard the reputations, respect the opinions, and
be perfectly tolerant of the errors, of each other, in matters of
faith and beliefs.

It is philosophical, because it teaches the great Truths concern-
ing the nature and existence of one Supreme Deity, and the exist-
ence and immortality of the soul. It revives the Academy of
Plato, and the wise teachings of Socrates. It reiterates the max-
ims of Pythagoras, Confucius, and Zoroaster, and reverentially
enforces the sublime lessons of Him who died upon the Cross.

The ancients thought that universal humanity acted under the
influence of two opposing Principles, the Good and the Evil : of
which the Good urg^d men toward Truth, Independence, and De-
voteclness ; and the Evil toward Falsehood, Servility, and Selfish-
ness. Masonry represents the Good Principle and constantly wars
against the evil one. It is the Hercules, the Osiris, the Apollo, the
Mithras, and the Ormuzd, at everlasting and deadly feud with the
demons of ignorance, brutality, baseness, falsehood, slavishness of
soul, intolerance, superstition, tyranny, meanness, the insolence of
wealth, and bigotry.

When despotism and superstition, twin-powers of evil and dark-
ness, reigned even-where and seemed invincible and immortal, it
invented, to avoid persecution, the mysteries, that is to say, the
allegory, the symbol, and the emblem, and transmitted its doc-
trines by the secret mode of initiation. Now, retaining its ancient
symbols, and in part its ancient ceremonies, it displays in every
civilized country its banner, on which in letters of living light its
great principles are written ; and it smiles at the puny efforts of
kings and popes to crush it out by excommunication and inter-
diction.

Man's views in regard to God, will contain only so much posi-
tive truth as the human mind is capable of receiving; whether
that truth is attained by the exercise of reason, or communicated

222 MORALS AND DOGMA.

by revelation. It must necessarily be both limited and alloyed, to
bring it within the competence of finite human intelligence. Be-
ing finite, we can form no correct or adequate idea of the Infinite ;
being material, we can form no clear conception of the Spiritual.
We do believe in and know the infinity of Space and Time, and
the spirituality of the Soul; but the idea of that infinity and
spirituality eludes us. Even Omnipotence cannot infuse infinite
conceptions into finite minds ; nor can God, without first entirely
changing the conditions of our being, pour a complete and full
knowledge of His own nature and attributes into the narrow capa-
city of a human soul. Human intelligence could not grasp it,
nor human language express it. The visible is, necessarily, the
measure of the invisible.

The consciousness of the individual reveals itself alone. His
knowledge cannot pass beyond the limits of his own being. His
conceptions of other things and other beings are only his concep-
tions. They are not those things or beings themselves. The living
principle of a living Universe must be INFINITE; while all our
ideas and conceptions are finitf, and applicable only to finite beings.

The Deity is thus not an object of knowledge, but of faith; not
to be approached by the understanding, but by the moral sense;
not to be conceived, but to be felt. All attempts to embrace the
Infinite in the conception of the Finite are, and must be only ac-
commodations to the frailty of man. Shrouded from human com-
prehension in an obscurity from which a chastened imagination is
awed back, and Thought retreats in conscious weakness, the Divine
Nature is a theme on which man is little entitled to dogmatize.
Here the philosophic Intellect becomes most painfully aware of its
own insufficiency.

And yet it is here that man most dogmatizes, classifies and de-
scribes God's attributes, makes out his map of God's nature, and
his inventory of God's qualities, feelings, impulses, and passions :
and then hangs and burns his brother, who, as dogmatically as he,
makes out a different map and inventory. The common under-
standing has no humility. Its God is an incarnate Divinity. Im-
perfection imposes its own limitations on the Illimitable, and
clothes the Inconceivable Spirit of the Universe in forms that
come within the grasp of the senses and the'nntellect, and are
derived from that infinite and imperfect nature which is but God's
creation.

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 223

We are all of us, though not all equally, mistaken. The cher-
ished dogmas of each of us are not, as we fondly suppose, the pure
truth of God ; but simply our own special form of error, our
guesses at truth, the refracted and fragmentary rays of light that
have fallen upon our own minds. Our little systems have their
day, and cease to be ; they are but broken lights of God ; and He
is more than they. Perfect truth is not attainable anywhere. We
style this Degree that of Perfection ; and yet what it teaches is
imperfect and defective. Yet we are not to relax in the pursuit
of truth, nor contentedly acquiesce in error. It is our duty always
to press forward in the search ; for though absolute truth is unat-
tainable, yet the amount of error in our views is capable of pro-
gressive and perpetual diminution ; and thus Masonry is a con-
tinual struggle toward the light.

All errors are not equally innocuous. That wrhich is most inju-
rious is to entertain unworthy conceptions of the nature and
attributes of God ; and it is this that Masonry symbolizes by igno-
rance of the True Word. The true word of a Mason is, not the
entire, perfect, absolute truth in regard to God; but the highest
and noblest conception of Him that our minds are capable of form-
ing; and this -word is Ineffable, because one man cannot commu-
nicate to another his own conception of Deity ; since every man's
conception of God must be proportioned to his mental cultivation,
and intellectual powers, and moral excellence. God is, as man
conceives Him, the reflected image of -man himself.

For every man's conception of God must vary with his mental
cultivation and mental po\vers. If any one contents himself with
any lower image than his intellect is capable of grasping, then he
contents himself with that which is false to him, as well as false in
fact. If lower than he can reach, he must needs feel it to be false.
And if we, of the nineteenth century after Christ, adopt the con-
ceptions of the nineteenth century before Him ; if our conceptions
of God are those of the ignorant, narrow-minded, and vindictive
Israelite ; then we think worse of God, and have a lower, meaner,
and more limited view of His nature, than the faculties which He
has bestowed are capable of grasping. The highest view we can
form is nearest to the truth. If we acquiesce in any lower one,
we acquiesce in an untruth. We feel that it is an affront and an
indignity to Him, to conceive of Him as cruel, short-sighted, ca-
pricious, and unjust ; as a jealous, an angry, a vindictive Being.

224 MORALS AND DOGMA.

When we examine our conceptions of His character, if we can
conceive of a loftier, nobler, higher, more beneficent, glorious, and
magnificent character, then this latter is to us the true conception
of Deity; for nothing can be imagined more excellent than He.

Religion, to obtain currency and influence with the great mass
of mankind, must needs be alloyed with such an amount of error
as to place it far below the standard attainable by the higher hu-
man capacities. A religion as pure as the loftiest and most culti-
vated human reason could discern, would not be comprehended
by, or effective over, the less educated portion of mankind. What
is Truth to the philosopher, would not be Truth, nor have the
effect of Truth, to the peasant. The religion of the many must
necessarily be more incorrect than that of the refined and reflective
few, not so much in its essence as in its forms, not so much in the
spiritual idea which lies latent at the bottom of it, as in the sym-
bols and dogmas in which that idea is embodied. The truest
religion would, in many points, not be comprehended by the igno-
rant, nor consolatory to them, nor guiding and supporting for
them. The doctrines of the Bible are often not clothed in the
language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey
to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doc-
trine. A perfectly pure faith, free from all extraneous admixtures,
a system of noble theism and lofty morality, would find too little
preparation for it in the common mind and heart, to admit of
prompt reception by the masses of mankind; and Truth might
not have reached us, if it had not borrowed the wings of Error.

The Mason regards God as a Moral Governor, as well as an
Original Creator ; as a God at hand, and not merely one afar off
in the distance of infinite space, and in the remoteness of Past
or Future Eternity. He conceives of Him as taking a watchful
and presiding interest in the affairs of the world, and as influenc-
ing the hearts and actions of men.

To him, God is the great Source of the World of Life and Mat-
ter ; and man, with his wonderful corporeal and mental frame,
His direct work. He believes that God has made men with differ-
ent intellectual capacities ; and enabled some, -by superior intellect-
ual power, to see and originate truths which are hidden from the
mass of men. He believes that when it is His^ will that mankind
should make some great step forward, or achieve some pregnant
discovery. He calls into being some intellect of more than ordi-

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 225

nary magnitude and power, to give birth to new ideas, and grander
conceptions of the Truths vital to Humanity.

We hold that God has so ordered matters in this beautiful and
harmonious, but mysteriously-governed Universe, that one great
mind after another will arise, from time to time, as such are
needed, to reveal to men the truths that are wanted, and the
amount of truth that can be borne. He so arranges, that nature
and the course of events shall send men into the world, endowed
with that higher mental and moral organization, in which grand
truths, and sublime gleams of spiritual light \vill spontaneously
and inevitably arise. These speak to men by inspiration.

Whatever Hiram really was, he is the type, perhaps an imag-
inary type, to us, of humanity in its highest phase; an exemplar
of what man may and should become, in the course of ages, in his
progress toward the realization of his destiny ; an individual gifted
with a glorious intellect, a noble soul, a fine organization, and a
perfectly balanced moral being ; an earnest of what humanity may
be, and what we believe it will hereafter be in God's good time ; the
possibility of the race made real.

The Mason believes that God has arranged this glorious but per-
plexing world with a purpose, and on a plan. He holds that every
man sent upon this earth, and especially every man of superior
capacity, has a duty to perform, a mission to fulfill, a baptism to
be baptized with ; that every great and good man possesses some
portion of God's truth, which he must proclaim to the world, and
which must bear fruit in his own bosom. In a true and simple
sense, he believes all the pure, wise, and intellectual to be inspired,
and to be so for the instruction, advancement, and elevation of
mankind. That kind of inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is
not limited to the few writers claimed by Jews, Christians, or
Moslems, but is co-extensive with the race. It is the consequence
of a faithful use of our faculties. Each man is its subject, God is
its source, and Truth its only test. It differs in degrees, as the
intellectual endowments, the moral wealth of the soul, and the de-
gree of cultivation of those endowments and faculties differ. It is
limited to no sect, age, or nation. It is wide as the world and
common as God. It was not given to a few men, in the infancy
of mankind, to monopolize inspiration, and bar God out of the
soul. We are not born in the dotage and decay of the world. The
stars are beautiful as in their prime ; the most ancient Heavens

226 MORALS AND DOGMA.

are fresh and strong. God is still everywhere in nature. Wher-
ever a heart beats with love, wherever Faith and Reason utter
their oracles, there is God, as formerly in the hearts of seers and
prophets. No soil on earth is so holy as the good man's heart ;
nothing is so full of God. This inspiration is not given to the
learned alone, not alone to the great and wise, but to every faithful
child of God. Certain as the open eye drinks in the light, do the
pure in heart see God ; and he who lives truly, feels Him as a pres-
ence within the soul. The conscience is the very voice of Deity.

Masonry, around whose altars the Christian, the Hebrew, the
Moslem, the Brahmin, the followers of Confucius and Zoroaster,
can assemble as brethren and unite in prayer to the one God who
is above all the Baalim, must needs leave it to each of its Initiates
to look for the foundation of his faith and hope to the written
scriptures of his own religion. For itself it finds those truths
definite enough, which are written by the finger of God upon the
heart of man and on the pages of the book of nature. Views of
religion and duty, wrought out by the meditations of the studious,
confirmed by the allegiance of the good and wise, stamped as ster-
ling by the response they find in every uncorrupted mind, com-
mend themselves to Masons of every creed, and may well be ac-
cepted by all.

The Mason does not pretend to dogmatic certainty, nor vainly
imagine such certainty attainable. He considers that if there
were no written revelation, he could safely rest the hopes that ani-
mate him and the principles that guide him, on the deductions of
reason and the convictions of instinct and consciousness. He can
find a sure foundation for his religious belief, in these deductions
of the intellect and convictions of the heart. For reason proves
to him the existence and attributes of God ; and those spiritual
instincts which he feels are the voice of God in his soul, infuse
into his mind a sense of his relation to God, a conviction of the
beneficence of his Creator and Preserver, and a hope of future ex-
istence ; and his reason and conscience alike unerringly point to
virtue as the highest good, and the destined aim and purpose of
man's life.

He studies the wonders of the Heavens, the frame-work and
revolutions of the Earth, the mysterious beauties and adaptations
of animal existence, the moral and material constitution of th^
human creature, so fearfully and wonderfully made ; and is satis-

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, /,ND SUBLIME MASON. 22J

fied that God IS ; and that a Wise and Good Being is the author
of the starry Heavens above him, and of the moral world within
him ; and his mind finds an adequate foundation for its hopes, its
worship, its principles of action, in the far-stretching Universe, in
the glorious firmament, in the deep, full soul, bursting with unut-
terable thoughts.

These are truths which every reflecting mind will unhesitatingly
receive, as not to be surpassed, nor capable of improvement ; and
fitted, if obeyed, to make earth indeed a Paradise, and man only a
little lower than the angels. The worthlessness of ceremonial
observances, and the necessity of active virtue ; the enforcement
of purity of heart as the security for purity of life, and of the
government of the thoughts, as the originators and forerunners of
action ; universal philanthropy, requiring us to love all men, and
to do unto others that and that only which we should think it
right, just, and generous for them to do unto us ; forgiveness of
injuries ; the necessity of self-sacrifice in the discharge of duty ;
humility ; genuine sincerity, and being that which we seem to be';
all these sublime precepts need no miracle, no voice from the
clouds, to recommend them to our allegiance, or to assure us of
their divine origin. They command obedience by virtue of their
inherent rectitude and beauty; and have been, and are, and will
be the law in every age and every country of the world. God
revealed them to man in the beginning.

To the Mason, God is our Father in Heaven, to be Whose especial
children is the sufficient reward of the peacemakers, to see Whose
face the highest hope of the pure in heart ; Who is ever at hand to
strengthen His true worshippers ; to Whom our most fervent love is
due, our most humble and patient submission ; Whose most accept-
able worship is a pure and pitying heart and a beneficent life ; in
Whose constant presence we live and act, to Whose merciful dispo-
sal we are resigned by that death which, we hope and believe, is
but the entrance to a better life ; and Whose wise decrees forbid a
man to lap his soul in an elyseum of mere indolent content.

As to our feelings toward Him and our conduct toward man,
Masonry teaches little about which men can differ, and little from
which they can dissent. He is our Father; and we are all breth-
ren. This much lies open to the most ignorant and busy, as fully
as to those who have most leisure and are most learned. This
needs no Priest to teach it, and no authority to indorse it ; and if

228 MORALS AND DOGMA.

every man did that only which is consistent with it, it would exile
barbarity, cruelty, intolerance, uncharitableness, perfidy, treachery,
revenge, selfishness, and all their kindred vices and bad passions
beyond the confines of the world.

The true Mason, sincerely holding that a Supreme God created
and governs this world, believes also that He governs it by laws,
which, though wise, just, and beneficent, are yet steady, unwaver-
ing, inexorable. He believes that his agonies and sorrows are or-
dained for his chastening, his strengthening, his elaboration and
development ; because they are the necessary results of the opera-
tion of laws, the best that could be devised for the happiness and
purification of the species, and to give occasion and opportunity
for the practice of all the virtues, from the homeliest and most
common, to the noblest and most sublime ; or perhaps not even
that, but the best adapted to work out the vast, awful, glorious,
eternal designs of the Great Spirit of the Universe. He believes
that the ordained operations of nature, which have brought misery
to him, have, from the very unswerving tranquillity of their ca-
reer, showered blessings and sunshine upon many another path ;
that the unrelenting chariot of Time, which has crushed or maimed
him in its allotted course, is pressing onward to the accomplish-
ment of those serene and mighty purposes, to have contributed to
which, even as a victim, is an honor and a recompense. He takes
this view of Time and Nature and God, and yet bears his lot with-
out murmur or distrust ; because it is a portion of a system, the
best possible, because ordained by God. He does not believe that
God loses sight of him, while superintending the march of the
great harmonies of the Universe; nor that it was not foreseen,
when the Universe was created, its laws enacted, and the long suc-
cession of its operations pre-ordained, that in the great march of
those events, he would suffer pain and undergo calamity. He be-
lieves that his individual good entered into God's consideration, as
well as the great cardinal results to which the course of all things
is tending.

Thus believing, he has attained an eminence in virtue, the high-
est, amid passive excellence, which humanity can reach. He finds
his reward and his support in the reflection that he is an unreluc-
tant and self-sacrificing co-operator with the Creator of the Uni-
verse ; and in the noble consciousness of being worthy and capable
of so sublime a conception, yet so sad a destiny. He is then truly

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 229

entitled to be called a Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason.
He is content to fall early in the battle, if his body may but form
a stepping-stone for the future conquests of humanity.

It cannot be that God, Who, we are certain, is perfectly good, can
choose us to suffer pain, unless either we are ourselves to receive
from it an antidote to what is evil in ourselves, or else as such pain
is a necessary part in the scheme of the Universe, which as a whole
is good. In either case, the Mason receives it with submission.
He would not suffer unless it was ordered so. Whatever his creed,
if he believes that God is, and that He cares for His creatures, he
cannot doubt that ; nor that it would not have been so ordered,
unless it was either better for himself^ or for some other persons,
or for some things. To complain and lament is to murmur against
God's will, and worse than unbelief.

The Mason, whose mind is cast in a nobler mould than those of
the ignorant and unreflecting, and is instinct with a diviner life, —
who loves truth more than rest, and the peace of Heaven rather
than the peace of Eden, — to whom a loftier being brings severer
cares, — who knows that man does not live by pleasure or content
alone, but by the presence of the power of God, — must cast be-
hind him the hope of any other repose or tranquillity, than that
which is the last reward of long agonies of thought ; he must re-
linquish all prospect of any Heaven save that of which trouble is
the avenue and portal ; he must gird up his loins, and trim his
lamp, for a work that must be done, and must not be negligently
done. If he does not like to live in the furnished lodgings of tra-
dition, he must build his own house, his own system of faith and
thought, for himself.

The hope of success, and not the hope of reward, should be our
stimulating and sustaining power. Our object, and not ourselves,
should be our inspiring thought. Selfishness is a sin, when tem-
porary, and for time. Spun out to eternity, it does not become
celestial prudence. We should toil and die, not for Heaven or
Bliss, but for Duty.

In the more frequent cases, where we have to join our efforts to
those of thousands of others, to contribute to the carrying forward
of a great cati?e : merely to till the ground or sow the seed for a
very distant harvest, or to prepare the way for the future advent
of some great amendment ; the amount which each one contrib-
utes to the achievement of ultimate success, the portion of the

230 MORALS AND DOGMA.

price which justice should assign to each as his especial produc-
tion, can never be accurately ascertained. Perhaps few of those
who have ever labored, in the patience of secrecy and silence, to
bring about some political or social change, which they felt con-
vinced would ultimately prove of vast service to humanity, lived
to see the change effected, or the anticipated good flow from it.
Fewer still of them were able to pronounce what appreciable
weight their several efforts contributed to the achievement of the
change desired. Many will doubt, whether, in truth, these exer-
tions have any influence whatever; and, discouraged, cease all
active effort.

Not to be thus discouraged, the Mason must labor to elevate
and purify his motives, as well as sedulously cherish the convic-
tion, assuredly a true one, that in this world there is no such thing
as effort thrown away ; that in all labor there is profit ; that all
sincere exertion, in a righteous and unselfish cause, is necessarily
followed, in spite of all appearance to the contrary, by an appro-
priate and proportionate success; that no bread cast upon the
waters can be wholly lost ; that no seed planted in the ground can
fail to quicken in due time and measure; and that, however we
may, in moments of despondency, be apt to doubt, not only
whether our cause will triumph, but whether, if it does, we shall
have contributed to its triumph, — there is One, Who has not
only seen every exertion we have made, but Who can assign
the exact degree in which each soldier has assisted to gain the
great victory over social evil. No good work is done wholly in
vain.

The Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason will in nowise
deserve that honorable title, if he has, not that strength, that will,
that self-sustaining energy ; that Faith, that feeds upon no earthly
hope, nor ever thinks of victory, but, content in its own consum-
mation, combats because it ought to combat, rejoicing fights, and
still rejoicing falls.

The Augean Stables of the World, the accumulated uncleanness
and misery of centuries, require a mighty river to cleanse them
thoroughly away ; every drop we contribute aids to swell that
river and augment its force, in a degree appreciable by God,
though not by man ; and he whose zeal is deep and earnest, will
not be over-anxious that his individual drops should be distin-
guishable amid the mighty mass of cleansing and fertilizing wa-

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 23!

ters ; far less that, for the sake of distinction, it should flow in
ineffective singleness away.

The true Mason will not be careful that his name should be
inscribed upon the mite which he casts into the treasury of God.
It suffices him to know that if he has labored, with purity of pur-
pose, in any good cause, he must have contributed to its success;
that the degree in which he has contributed is a matter of infi-
nitely small concern ; and still more, that the consciousness of
having so contributed, however obscurely and unnoticed, is his
sufficient, even if it be his sole, reward. Let every Grand Elect,
Perfect, and Sublime Mason cherish this faith. It is a duty. It
is the brilliant and never-dying light that shines within and
through the symbolic pedestal of alabaster, on which reposes the
perfect cube of agate, symbol of duty, inscribed with the divine
name of God. He who industriously sows and reaps is a good
laborer, and worthy of his hire. But he who sows that which
shall be reaped by others, by those who will know not of and care
not for the sower, is a laborer of a nobler order, and worthy of a
more excellent reward.

The Mason does not exhort others to an ascetic undervaluing
of this life, as an insignificant and unworthy portion of existence ;
for that demands feelings which are unnatural, and which, there-
fore, if attained, must be morbid, and if merely professed, insin-
cere ; and teaches us to look rather to a future life for the com-
pensation of social evils, than to this life for their cure; and so
does injury to the cause of virtue and to that of social progress.
Life is real, and is earnest, and it is full of duties to be performed.
It is the beginning of our immortality. Those only who feel a
deep interest and affection for this world will work resolutely for
its amelioration ; those whose affections are transferred to Heaven,
easily acquiesce in the miseries of earth, deeming them hopeless,
befitting, and ordained; and console themselves with the idea of
the amends which are one day to be theirs. It is a sad truth, that
those most decidedly given to spiritual contemplation, and to
making religion rule in their hearts, are often most apathetic tow-
ard all improvement of this world's systems, and in many cases
virtual conservatives of evil, and hostile to political and social re-
form, as diverting men's energies from eternity.

The Mason does not war with his own instincts, macerate the
body into weakness and disorder, and disparage what he sees to be

232 MORALS AND DOGMA.

beautiful, knows to be wonderful, and feels to be unspeakably
dear and fascinating. He does not put aside the nature which
God has given him, to struggle after one which He has not be-
stowed. He knows that man is sent into the world, not a spir-
itual, but a composite being, made up of body and mind, the body
having, as is fit and needful in a material world, its full, rightful,
r.nd allotted share. His life is guided by a full recognition of this
fact. He does not deny it in bold words, and admit it in weak-
nesses and inevitable failings. He believes that his spirituality
will come in the next stage of his being, when he puts on the spir-
itual body ; that his body will be dropped at death ; and that, until
then, God meant it to be commanded and controlled, but not neg-
lected, despised, or ignored by the soul, under pain of heavy con-
sequences.

Yet the Mason is not indifferent as to the fate of the soul, after
its present life, as to its continued and eternal being, and the char-
acter of the scenes in which that being will be fully developed.
These are to him topics of the profoundest interest, and the most
ennobling and refining contemplation. They occupy much of his
leisure ; and as he becomes familiar with the sorrows and calami-
ties of this life, as his hopes are disappointed and his visions of
happiness here fade away ; when life has wearied him in its
race of hours; when he is harassed and toil-worn, and the bur-
den of his years weighs heavy on him, the balance of attraction
gradually inclines in favor of another life; and he clings to his
lofty speculations with a tenacity of interest which needs no in-
junction, and will listen to no prohibition. They are the consol-
ing privilege of the aspiring, the wayworn, the weary, and the be-
reaved.

To him the contemplation of the Future lets in light upon the
Present, and develops the higher portions of his nature. He en-
deavors rightly to adjust the respective claims of Heaven and earth
upon his time and thought, so as to give the proper proportions
thereof to performing the duties and entering into the interests
of this world, and to preparation for a better; to the cultivation
and purification of his own character, and to the public service of
his fellow-men.

The Mason does not dogmatize, but entertainjng and uttering
his own convictions, he leaves every one else free'to do the same :
and only hopes that the time will come, even if after the lapse of

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 233

ages, when all men shall form one great family of brethren, and
one law alone, the law of love, shall govern God's whole Uni-
verse.

Believe as you may, my brother ; if the Universe is not, to you,
without a God, and if man is not like the beast that perishes, but
hath an immortal soul, we welcome you among us, to wear, as we
wear, with humility, and conscious of your demerits and short-
comings, the title of Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason.

It was not without a secret meaning, that twelve was the num-
ber of the Apostles of Christ, and seventy-two that of his Disciples :
that John addressed his rebukes and menaces to the Seven
churches, the number of the Archangels and the Planets. At
Babylon were the Seven Stages of Bersippa, a pyramid of Seven
stories, and at Ecbatana Seven concentric inclosures, each of a
different color. Thebes also had Seven gates, and the same number
is repeated again and again in the account of the flood. The
Sephiroth, or Emanations, ten in number, three in one class, and
seven in the other, repeat the mystic numbers of Pythagoras.
Seven Amschaspands or planetary spirits were invoked with
Ormuzd : Seven inferior Rishis of Hindustan were saved with the
head of their family in an ark: and Seven ancient personages
alone returned with the British just man, Hu, from the dale of
the grievous waters. There were Seven Heliadae, whose father
Helias, or the Sun, once crossed the sea in a golden cup; Seven
Titans, children of the older Titan, Kronos or Saturn ; Seven
Corybantes ; and Seven Cabiri, sons of Sydyk ; Seven primeval
Celestial spirits of the Japanese, and Seven Karfesters who
escaped from the deluge and began to be the parents of a new
race, on the summit of Mount Albordi. Seven Cyclopes, also,
built the walls of Tiryus.

Celsus, as quoted by Origen, tells us that the Persians repre-
sented by. symbols the two- fold motion of the stars, fixed and
planetary, and the passage of the Soul through their successive
spheres. They erected in their holy caves, in which the mystic
rites of the Mithriac Initiations were practised, what he denom-
inates a high ladder, on the Seven steps of which were Seven
gates or portals, according to the number of the Seven principal
heavenly bodies. Through these the aspirants passed, until they
reached the summit of the whole ; and this passage was styled a
transmigration through the spheres.
16

234 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Jacob saw in his dream a ladder planted or set on the earth,
and its top reaching to Heaven, and the Malaki Alohim ascending
and descending on it, and above it stood IHUH, declaring Himself
to be Ihuh-Alhi Abraham. The word translated ladder, is D^D
Salam, from ^D, Salal, raised, elevated, reared up, exalted, piled
up into a heap, Aggeravit, PI^D Salalah, means a heap, rampart,
or other accumulation of earth or stone, artificially made; and
V^D, Salaa or Sato, is a rock or cliff or boulder, and the name of
the city of Petra. There is no ancient Hebrew word to designate
a pyramid.

The symbolic mountain Meru was ascended by Seven steps or
stages ; and all the pyramids and artificial tumuli and hillocks
thrown up in flat countries were imitations of this fabulous and
mystic mountain, for purposes of worship. These were the "High
Places" so often mentioned in the Hebrew books, on which the
idolaters sacrificed to foreign gods.

The pyramids were sometimes square, and sometimes round.
The sacred Babylonian tower [^IJD, Magdol] , dedicated to the
great Father Bal, was an artificial hill, of pyramidal shape, and
Seven stages, built of brick, and each stage of a different color,
representing the Seven planetary spheres by the appropriate color
of each planet. Meru itself was said to be a single mountain, ter-
minating in three peaks, and thus a symbol of the Trimurti. The
great Pagoda at Tan j ore was of six stories, surmounted by a tem-
ple as the seventh, and on this three spires or towers. An ancient
pagoda at Deogur was surmounted by a tower, sustaining the
mystic egg and a trident. Herodotus tells us that the Temple of
Bal at Babylon was a tower composed of Seven towers, resting on
an eighth that served as basis, and successively diminishing in
size from the bottom to the top ; and Strabo tells us it was a pyr-
amid.

Faber thinks that the Mithriac ladder was really a pyramid with
Seven stages, each provided with a narrow door or aperture,
through each of which doors the aspirant passed, to reach the
summit, and then descended through similar doors on the opposite
side of the pyramid; the ascent and descent of the Soul being
thus represented.

Each Mithriac cave and all the most ancient temples were in-
tended to symbolize the Universe, which itself was habitually
called the Temple and habitation of Deity. Every temple was

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON. 235

the world in miniature ; and so the whole world was one grand
temple. The most ancient temples were roofless ; and therefore
the Persians, Celts, and Scythians strongly disliked artificial cov-
ered edifices. Cicero says that Xerxes burned the Grecian tem-
ples, on the express ground that the whole world was the Magnifi-
cent Temple and Habitation of the Supreme Deity. Macrobius
says that the entire Universe was judiciously deemed by many the
Temple of God. Plato pronounced the real Temple of the Deity
to be the world ; and Heraclitus declared that the Universe, varie-
gated with animals and plants and stars was the only genuine
Temple of the Divinity.

How completely the Temple of Solomon was symbolic, is
manifest, not only from the continual reproduction in it of
t^ie sacred numbers and of astrological symbols in the histor-
ical descriptions of it; but also, and yet more, from the de-
tails of the imaginary reconstructed edifice, seen by Ezechiel
in his vision. The Apocalypse completes the demonstration,
and shows the kabalistic meanings of the whole. The Sym-
bola Architectonica are found on the most ancient edifices ;
and these mathematical figures and instruments, adopted by
the Templars, and identical with those on the gnostic seals and
abraxas, connect their dogma with the Chaldaic, Syriac, and
Egyptian Oriental philosophy. The secret Pythagorean doc-
trines of numbers were preserved by the monks of Thibet, by
the Hierophants of Egypt and Eleusis, at Jerusalem, and in
the circular Chapters of the Druids ; and they are especially
consecrated in that mysterious book, the Apocalypse of Saint
John.

All temples were surrounded by pillars, recording the number
of the constellations, the signs of the zodiac, or the cycles of the
planets ; and each was a microcosm or symbol of the Universe,
having for roof or ceiling the starred vault of Heaven.

All temples were originally open at the top, having for roof the
sky. Twelve pillars described the belt of the zodiac. Whatever
the number of the pillars, they were mystical everywhere. At
Abury, the Druidic temple reproduced all the cycles by its col-
umns. Around the temples of Chilminar in Persia, of Baalbec,
and of Tukhti Schlomoh in Tartary, on the frontier of China,
stood forty pillars. On each side of the temple at Paestum were
fourteen, recording the Egyptian cycle of the dark and light sides

-36

MORALS AND DOGMA.

of the moon, as described by Plutarch ; the whole thirty-eieht
that surrounded them recording the two meteoric cycles so often
found in the Druidic temples.

The theatre built by Scaurus, in Greece, was surrounded by
360 columns ; the Temple at Mecca, and that at Icna in Scotland,
by 360 stones.

MORALS AND DOGMA.

CHAPTER OF ROSE CROIX

XV.

KNIGHT OF THE EAST OR OF THE
SWORD.

[Knight of the East, of the Sword, or of the Eagle.]

THIS Degree, like all others in Masonry, is symbolical. Based
upon historical truth and authentic tradition, it is still an alle-
gory. The leading lesson of this Degree is .Fidelity to obligation,
and Constancy and Perseverance under difficulties and discour-
agement.

Masonry is engaged in her crusade, — against ignorance, intoler-
ance, fanaticism, superstition, uncharitableness, and error. She
does not sail with the trade-winds, upon a smooth sea, with a
steady free breeze, fair for a welcoming harbor ; but meets and
must overcome many opposing currents, baffling winds, and dead
calms.

The chief obstacles to her success are the apathy and faithless-
ness of her own selfish children, and the supine indifference of
the world. In the roar and crush and hurry of life and business,
and the tumult and uproar of politics, the quiet voice of Masonry
is unheard and unheeded. The first lesson which one learns, who
engages in any great work of reform or beneficence, is, that men
are essentially careless, lukewarm, and indifferent as to every-
thing that does not concern their own personal and immediate

237

-38 ' . MORALS AND DOGMA.

welfare. It is to single men, and not to the united efforts of
many, that all' the great works of man, struggling toward perfec-
tion, are owing. The enthusiast, who imagines that he can in-
spire with his own enthusiasm the multitude that eddies around
him, or even the few who have associated themselves with him as
co-workers, is grievously mistaken ; and most often the conviction
of his own mistake is followed by discouragement and disgust.
To do all, to pay all, and to suffer all, and then, when despite all
obstacles and hindrances, success is accomplished, and a great
work done, to see those who opposed or looked coldly on it, claim
and reap all the praise and reward, is the common and almost uni-
versal lot of the benefactor of his kind.

He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world,
is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river
lashed into angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his
head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield
to the stress of the current, and float with it to the shore, or are
swept over the rapids; and only here and there the stout, strong
heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success.

It is the motionless and stationary that most frets and impedes
the current of progress ; the solid rock or stupid dead tree, rested
firmly on the bottom, and around which the river whirls and
eddies : the Masons that doubt and hesitate and are discouraged ;
that disbelieve in the capability of man to improve; that are not
disposed to toil and labor for the interest and well-being of gen-
eral humanity; that expect others to do all, even of that which
they do not oppose or ridicule; while they sit, applauding and
doing nothing, or perhaps prognosticating failure.

There were many such at the rebuilding of the Temple. There
were prophets of evil and misfortune — the lukewarm and the in-
different and the apathetic ; those who stood by and sneered ; and
those who thought they did God service enough if they now and
then faintly applauded. There were ravens croaking ill omen,
and murmurers who preached the folly and futility of the attempt.
The world is made up of such ; and they w.ere as abundant thei.
as they are now.

But gloomy and discouraging as was the prospect, with luke-
warmness within and bitter opposition without," our ancient breth-
ren persevered. Let us leave them engaged in the good work,
and whenever to us, as to them, success is uncertain, remote, and

KNIGHT OF THE EAST OR OF THE SWORD. 239

contingent, let us still remember that the only question for us to
ask, as true men and Masons, is, what does duty require ; and not
what will be the result and our reward if we do our duty. Work
on, with the Sword in one hand, and the Trowel in the other !

Masonry teaches that God is a Paternal Being, and has an in-
terest in his creatures, such as is expressed in the title Father; an
interest unknown to all the systems of Paganism, untaught in all
the theories of philosophy ; an interest not only in the glorious
beings of other spheres, the Sons of Light, the dwellers in Heav-
enly worlds, but in us, poor, ignorant, and unworthy; that He
has pity for the erring, pardon for the guilty, love for the pure,
knowledge for the humble, and promises of immortal life for
those who trust in and obey Him.

Without a belief in Him, life is miserable, the world is dark, the
Universe disrobed of its splendors, the intellectual tie to nature
broken, the charm of existence dissolved, the great hope of being
lost; and the mind, like a star struck from its sphere, wanders
through the infinite desert of its conceptions, without attraction,
tendency, destiny, or end.

Masonry teaches, that, of all the events and actions, that take
place in the universe of worlds and the eternal succession of ages,
there is not one, even the minutest, which God did not forever
foresee, with all the distinctness of immediate vision, combining
all, so that man's free will should be His instrument, like all the
other forces of nature.

It teaches that the soul of man is formed by Him for a pur-
pose; that, built up in its proportions, and fashioned in even,'
part, by infinite skill, an emanation from His spirit, its nature,
necessity, and design are virtue. It is so formed, so moulded, so
fashioned, so exactly balanced, so exquisitely proportioned in every
part, that sin introduced into it is misery; that vicious thoughts
fall upon it like drops of poison ; and guilty desires, breathing on
its delicate fibres, make plague-spots there, deadly as those of pes-
tilence upon the body. It is made for virtue, and not for vice ;
for purity, as its end, rest, and happiness. Not more vainly would
we attempt to make the mountain sink to the level of the valley,
the waves of the angry sea turn back from its shores and cease to
thunder upon the beach, the stars to halt in their swift courses,
than to change any one law of our own nature. And one of those
laws, uttered by God's voice, and speaking through every nerve

240 MORALS AND DOGMA.

and fibre, every force and element, of the moral constitution He
has given us, is that we must be upright and virtuous ; that if
tempted we must resist; that we must govern our unruly pas-
sions, and hold in hand our sensual appetites. And this is not the
dictate of an arbitrary will, nor of some stern and impracticable
law; but it is part of the great firm law of harmony that binds
the Universe together : not the mere enactment of arbitrary will ;
but the dictate of Infinite Wisdom.

We know that God is good, and that what He does is right.
This known, the works of creation, the changes of life, the desti-
nies of eternity, are all spread before us, as the dispensations and
counsels of infinite love. This known, we then know that the
love of God is working to issues, like itself, beyond all thought
and imagination good and glorious ; and that the only reason
why we do not understand it, is that it is too glorious for us to un-
derstand. God's love takes care for all, and nothing is neglected.
It watches over all, provides for all, makes wise adaptations for
all ; for age, for infancy, for maturity, for childhood ; in every
scene of this or another world ; for want, weakness, joy, sorrow,
and even for sin. All is good and well and right ; and shall be so
forever. Through the eternal ages the light of God's beneficence
shall shine hereafter, disclosing all, consummating all, rewarding
all that deserve reward. Then we shall see, what now we can onlv
believe. The cloud will be lifted up, the gate of mystery be
passed, and the full light shine forever; the light of which that
of the Lodge is a symbol. Then that which caused us trial shall
yield us triumph ; and that which made our heart ache shall fill
us with gladness ; and we shall then feel that there, as here, the
only true happiness is to learn, to advance, and to improve ; which
could not happen unless we had commenced with error, ignorance,
and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness, to reach
the light.

XVI.
PRINCE OF JERUSALEM.

WE no longer expect to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. To
us it has become but a symbol. To us the whole world is God's
Temple, as is every upright heart. To establish all over the world
the New Law and Reign of Love, Peace, Charity, and Toleration,
is to build that Temple, most acceptable to God, in erecting which
Masonry is now engaged. No longer needing to repair to Jerusa-
lem to worship, nor to offer up sacrifices and shed blood to prop5
tiate the Deity, man may make the woods and mountains his
Churches and Temples, and worship God with a devout gratitude,
and with works of charity and beneficence to his fellow-men. Wher-
ever the humble and contrite heart silently offers up its adoration,
under the overarching trees, in the open, level meadows, on the
hill-side, in the glen, or in the city's swarming streets ; there is
God's House and the New Jerusalem.

The Princes of Jerusalem no longer sit as magistrates to judge
between the people ; nor is their number limited to five. But
their duties still remain substantially the same, and their insignia
and symbols retain their old significance. Justice and Equity
are still their characteristics. To reconcile disputes and heal dis-
sensions, to restore amity and peace, to soothe dislikes and soften
prejudices, are their peculiar duties ; and they know that the
peacemakers are blessed.

Their emblems have been already explained. They are part of
the language of Masonry ; the same now as it ws.s when Moses
learned it from the Egyptian Hierophants.

Still we observe the spirit of the Divine law, as thus enunciated
to our ancient brethren, when the Temple was rebuilt, and the
book of the law again opened :

"Execute true judgment : and show mercy and compassion
every man to his brother. Oppress not the widow nor the father-
less, tho ctr?npfcr nr-r the poor: and let none of you imagine evil
against his brother in his heart. Speak ye every man the truth

241

242 MORALS AND DOGMA.

to his neighbor; execute the judgment of Truth and Peace in
your gates ; and love no false oath ; for all these I hate, saith the
Lord.

"Let those who have power rule in righteousness, and Princes
in judgment. And let him that is a judge be as an hiding-place
from the wind, and a covert from the tempest ; as rivers of water
in a dry place ; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
Then the vile person shall no more be called liberal ; nor the
churl bountiful; and the work of justice shall be peace; and the
effect of justice, quiet and security ; and wisdom and knowledge
shall be the stability of the times. Walk ye righteously and speak
uprightly ; despise the gains of oppression, shake from your hands
the contamination of bribes ; stop not your ears against the cries
of the oppressed, nor shut your eyes that you may not see the
crimes of the great ; and you shall dwell on high, and your place
of defence be like munitions of rocks."

Forget not these precepts of the old Law ; and especially do
not forget, as you advance, that every Mason, however humble, is
your brother, and the laboring man your peer ! Remember always
that all Masonry is work, and that the trowel is an emblem of the
Degrees in this Council. Labor, when rightly understood, is both
noble and ennobling, and intended to develop man's moral and
spiritual nature, and not to be deemed a disgrace or a misfortune.

Everything around us is, in its bearings and influences, moral.
The serene and bright morning, when we recover our conscious
existence from the embraces of sleep; when, from that image of
Death God calls us to a new life, and again gives us existence, and
His mercies visit us in every bright ray and glad thought, and
call for gratitude and content ; the silence of that early dawn, the
hushed silence, as it were, of expectation ; the holy eventide, its
cooling breeze, its lengthening shadows, its falling shades, its still
and sober hour ; the sultry noontide and the stern and solemn
midnight ; and Spring-time, and chastening Autumn ; and Sum-
mer, that unbars our gates, and carries us forth amidst the ever-
renewed wonders of the world ; and Winter, that gathers us around
the evening hearth : — all these, as they pass, touch by turns the
spring-is of the spiritual life in us, and are conducting that life to
good ui' evil. The idle watch-hand often -points to something
within us ; and the shadow of the gnomon on the dial often falls
upon the conscience.

PRIMCE OF JERUSALEM. 243

A life of labor is not a state of inferiority or degradation. The
Almighty has not cast man's lot beneath the quiet shades, and
amid glad groves and lovely hills, with no task to perform ; with
nothing to do but to rise up and eat, and to lie down and rest.
He has ordained that Work shall be done, in all the dwellings of
life, in every productive field, in every busy city, and on every
wave of every ocean. And this He has done, because it has
pleased Him to give man a nature destined to higher ends than
indolent repose and irresponsible profitless indulgence; and be-
cause, for developing the energies of such a nature, work was the
necessary and proper element. We might as well ask why He
could not make two and two be -six, as why He could not develop
these energies without the instrumentality of work. They are
equally impossibilities.

This, Masonry teaches, as a great Truth; a great moral land-
mark, that ought to guide the course of all mankind. It teaches
its toiling children that the scene of their daily life is all spiritual,
that the very implements of their toil, the fabrics they weave, the
merchandise they barter, are designed for spiritual ends ; that so
believing, their daily lot may be to them a sphere for the noblest
improvement. That which we do in our intervals of relaxation,
our church-going, and our book-reading, are especially designed to
prepare our minds for the action of Life. We are to hear and read
and meditate, that we may act well ; and the action of Life is itself
the great field for spiritual improvement. There is no task of in-
dustry or business, in field or forest, on the wharf or the ship's
deck, in the office or the exchange, but has spiritual ends. There
is no care or cross of our daily labor, but was especially ordained
to nurture in us patience, calmness, resolution, perseverance, gen-
tleness, disinterestedness, magnanimity. Nor is there any tool or
implement of toil, but is a part of the great spiritual instrumen-
tality.

All the relations of life, those of parent, child, brother, sister,
friend, associate, lover and beloved, husband, wife, are moral,
throughout every living tie and thrilling nerve that bind them
together. They cannot subsist a day nor an hour without putting
the mind to a trial of its truth, fidelity, forbearance, and disinter-
estedness.

A great city is one extended scene of moral action. There is
no blow struck in it but has a purpose, ultimately good or bad,

I

244 MORALS AND DOGMA.

and therefore moral. There is no action performed, but has a
motive; and motives are the special jurisdiction of morality.
Equipages, houses, and furniture are symbols of what is moral,
and they in a thousand ways minister to right or wrong feeling.
Everything that belongs to us, ministering to our comfort or lux-
ury, awakens in us emotions of pride or gratitude, of selfishness
or vanity ; thoughts of self-indulgence, or merciful remembrances
of the needy and the destitute.

Everything acts upon and influences us. God's great law of
sympathy and harmony is potent and inflexible as His law of
gravitation. A sentence embodying a noble thought stirs our
blood ; a noise made by a child frets and exasperates us, and influ-
ences our actions.

A world of spiritual objects, influences, and relations lies around
us all. We all vaguely deem it to be so; but he only lives a
charmed life, like that of genius and poetic inspiration, who com-
munes with the spiritual scene around him, hears the voice of the
spirit in every sound, sees its signs in every passing form of things,
and feels its impulse in all action, passion, and being. Very near
to us lie the mines of wisdom ; unsuspected they lie all around us.
There is a secret in the simplest things, a wonder in the plainest,
a charm in the dullest.

We are all naturally seekers of wonders. We travel far to see
the majesty of old ruins, the venerable forms of the hoary moun-
tains, great w?.ter-falls, and galleries of art. And yet the world-
wonder is all around us ; the wonder of setting suns, and evening
stars, of the magic spring-time, the blossoming of the trees, the
strange transformations of the moth; the wonder of the Infinite
Divinity and of His boundless revelation. There is no splendor
beyond that which sets its morning throne in the golden East ; no
dome sublime as that of Heaven ; no beauty so fair as that of the
verdant, blossoming earth ; no place, however invested with the
sanctities of old time, like that home which is hushed and folded
within the embrace of the humblest wall and roof.

And all these are but the symbols of things far greater and
higher. All is but the clothing of the spirit. In this vesture of
time is wrapped the immortal nature : in this show of circum-
stance and form stands revealed the stupendous* -reality. Let man
but be, as he is, a living soul, communing with himself and with

PRINCE OF JERUSALEM. 245

God, and his vision becomes eternity ; his abode, infinity ; his
home, the bosom of all-embracing love.

The great problem of Humanity is wrought out in the humblest
abodes ; no more than this is done in the highest. A human heart
throbs beneath the beggar's gabardine ; and that and no more stirs
with its beating the Prince's mantle. The beauty of Love, the
charm of Friendship, the sacredness of Sorrow, the heroism of
Patience, the noble Self-sacrifice, these and their like, alone, make
life to be life indeed, and are its grandeur and its power. They
are the priceless treasures and glory of humanity ; and they are
not things of condition. All places and all scenes are alike clothed
with the grandeur and charm of virtues such as these.

The million occasions will come to us all, in the ordinary paths
of our life, in our homes, and by our firesides, wherein we may
act as nobly, as if, all our life long, we led armies, sat in senates,
or visited beds of sickness and pain. Varying every hour, the
million occasions will come in which we may restrain our pas-
sions, subdue our hearts to gentleness and patience, resign our
own interest for another's advantage, speak words of kindness and
wisdom, raise the fallen, cheer the fainting and sick in spirit, and
soften and assuage the weariness and bitterness of their mortal lot.
To every Mason there will be opportunity enough for these. They
cannot be written on his tomb ; but they will"be written deep in
the hearts of men, of friends, of children, of kindred all around
him, in the book of the great account, and, in their eternal influ-
ences, on the great pages of the Universe.

To such a destiny, at least, my Brethren, let us all aspire ! These
laws of Masonry let us all strive to obey ! And so may our hearts
become true temples of the Living God ! And may He encourage
our zeal, sustain our hopes, and assure us of success !

XVII.

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST.

THIS is the first of the Philosophical Degrees of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite ; and the beginning- of a course of in-
struction which will fully unveil to you the heart and inner mys-
teries of Masonry. Do not despair because you have .often seemed
on the point of attaining the inmost light, and have as often been
disappointed. In all time, truth has been hidden under symbols,
and often under a succession of allegories: where veil after veil
had to be penetrated before the true Light was reached, and the
essential truth stood revealed. The Human Light is but an im-
perfect reflection of a ray of the Infinite and Divine.

We are about to approach those ancient Religions which once
246

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST.

ruled the minds of men, and whose ruins encumber the plains of
the great Past, as the broken columns of Palmyra and Tadmor lie
bleaching on the sands of the desert. They rise before us, those
old, strange, mysterious creeds and faiths, shrouded in the mists
of antiquity, and stalk dimly and undefined along the line which
divides Time from Eternity ; and forms of strange, wild, startling
beauty mingle in the vast throng of figures with shapes monstrous,
grotesque, and hideous.

The religion taught by Moses, which, like the laws of Egypt,
enunciated the principle of exclusion, borrowed, at every period
of its existence, from all the creeds with which it came in contact.
While, by the studies of the learned and wise, it enriched itself
with the most admirable principles of the religions of Egypt and
Asia, it was changed, in the wanderings of the People, by every-
thing that was most impure or seductive in the pagan manners
and superstitions. It was one thing in the times of Moses and
Aaron, another in those of David and Solomon, and still another
in those of Daniel and Philo.

At the time when John the Baptist made his appearance in the
desert, near the shores of the Dead Sea, all the old philosophical
and religious systems were approximating toward each other. A
general lassitude inclined the minds of all toward the quietude of
that amalgamation of doctrines for which the expeditions of Alex-
ander and the more peaceful occurrences that followed, \vith the
establishment in Asia and Africa of many Grecian dynasties and
a great number of Grecian colonies, had prepared the way. After
the intermingling of different nations, which resulted from the
wars of Alexander in three-quarters of the globe, the doctrines of
Greece, of Egypt, of Persia, and of India, met and intermingled
everywhere. All the barriers that had formerly kept the nations
apart, were thrown down; and while the People of the West
readily connected their faith with those of the East, those of the
Orient hastened to learn the traditions of Rome and the legends
of Athens. While the Philosophers of Greece, all (except the dis-
ciples of Epicurus) more or less Platonists, seized eagerly upon the
beliefs and doctrines of the East, — the Jews and Egyptians, be-
fore then the most exclusive of all peoples, yielded to that eclecti-
cism which prevailed among their masters, the Greeks and Romans.
Under the same influences of toleration, even those who em-
braced Christianity, mingled together the old and the new, Chris-
17

248 MORALS AND DOGMA.

tianity and Philosophy, the Apostolic teachings and the traditions
of Mythology. The man of intellect, devotee of one system,
rarely displaces it with another in all its purity. The people take
such a creed as is offered them. Accordingly, the distinction be-
tween the esoteric and the exoteric doctrine, immemorial in other
creeds, easily gained a foothold among many of the Christians ;
and it was held by a vast number, even during the preaching of
Paul, that the writings of the Apostles were incomplete ; that they
contained only the germs of another doctrine, which must receive
from the hands of philosophy, not only the systematic arrangement
which was wanting, but all the development which lay concealed
therein. The writings of the Apostles, they said, in addressing
themselves to mankind in general, enunciated only the articles of
the vulgar faith ; but transmitted the mysteries of knowledge to
superior minds, to the Elect, — mysteries handed down from gen-
eration to generation in esoteric traditions ; and to this science of
the mysteries they gave the name of rv<o<ns [Gnosis].

The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from
Plato and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabalah, and the Sacred
books of India and Egypt ; and thus introduced into the bosom
of Christianity the cosmological and theosophical speculations,
which had formed the larger portion of the ancient religions of the
Orient, joined to those of the Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doc-
trines, which the Neo-Platonists had equally adopted in the Occi-
dent.

Emanation from the Deity of all spiritual beings, progressive
degeneration of these beings from emanation to emanation, re-
demption and return of all to the purity of the Creator; and,
after the re-establishment of the primitive harmony of all, a for-
tunate and truly divine condition of all, in the bosom of God ;
such were the fundamental teachings of Gnosticism. The genius
of the Orient, with its contemplations, irradiations, and intuitions,
dictated its doctrines. Its language corresponded to its origin.
Full of imagery, it had all the magnificence, the inconsistencies,
and the mobility of the figurative style.

Behold, it said, the light, which emanates from an immense
centre of Light, that spreads everywhere its benovolent rays; so
do the spirits of Light emanate from the Djvine Light. Behold,
all the springs which nourish, embellish, fertilize, and purify the
Earth ; they emanate from one and the same ocean ; so from the

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 249

bosom of the Divinity emanate so many streams, which form and
fill the universe of intelligences. Behold numbers, which all
emanate from one primitive number, all resemble it, all are com-
posed of its essence, and still vary infinitely ; and utterances, de-
composable into so many syllables and elements, all contained in
the primitive Word, and still infinitely various ; so the world of
Intelligences emanated from a Primary Intelligence, and they all
resemble it, and yet display an infinite variety of existences.

It revived and combined the old doctrines of the Orient and the
Occident ; and it found in many passages of the Gospels and the
Pastoral letters, a warrant for doing so. Christ himself spoke in
parables and allegories, John borrowed the enigmatical language
of the Platonists, and Paul often indulged in incomprehensible
rhapsodies, the meaning of which could have been clear to the Ini-
tiates alone.

It is admitted that the cradle of Gnosticism is probably to be
looked for in Syria, and even in Palestine. Most of its expounders
wrote in that corrupted form of the Greek used by the Hellenistic
Jews, and in the Septuagint and the New Testament ; and there
was a striking analogy between their doctrines and those of the
Judaeo-Egyptian Philo, of Alexandria; itself the seat of three
schools, at once philosophic and religious — the Greek, the Egyp-
tian, and the Jewish.

Pythagoras and Plato, the most mystical of the Grecian Philos-
ophers (the latter heir to the doctrines of the former), and who
had travelled, the latter in Egypt, and the former in Phoenicia,
India, and Persia, also taught the esoteric doctrine and the distinc-
tion between the initiated and the profane. The dominant doc-
trines of Platonism were found in Gnosticism. Emanation of
Intelligences from the bosom of the Deity; the going astray in
error and the sufferings of spirits, so long as they are remote from
God, and imprisoned in matter; vain and long-continued efforts
to arrive at the knowledge of the Truth, and re-enter into their
primitive union with the Supre-me Being; alliance of a pure and
divine soul with an irrational soul, the seat of evil desires ; angels
or demons who dwell in and govern the planets, having but an
imperfect knowledge of the ideas that presided at the creation;
regeneration of all beings by their return to the xbauoz vo^roc,
[kosmos noetos], the world of Intelligences, and its Chief, the
Supreme Being; sole possible mode of re-establishing that primi-

250 MORALS AND DOGMA.

tive harmony of the creation, of which the music of the spheres
of Pythagoras was the image ; these were the analogies of the two
systems ; and we discover in them some of the ideas that form a
part of Masonry; in which, in the present mutilated condition of
the symbolic Degrees, they are disguised and overlaid with fiction
and absurdity, or present themselves as casual hints that are passed
by wholly unnoticed.

The distinction between the esoteric and exoteric doctrines (a
distinction purely Masonic), was always and from the very earliest
times preserved among the Greeks. It remounted to the fabulous
times of Orpheus ; and the mysteries of Theosophy were found in
all their traditions and myths. And after the time of Alexander,
they resorted for instruction, dogmas, and mysteries, to all the
schools, to those of Egypt and Asia, as well as those of Ancient
Thrace, Sicily, Etruria, and Attica.

The Jewish-Greek School of Alexandria is known only by two
of its Chiefs, Aristobulus and Philo, both Jews of Alexandria in
Egypt. Belonging to Asia by its origin, to Egypt by its residence,
to Greece by its language and studies, it strove to show that all
truths embedded in the philosophies of other countries were trans-
planted thither from Palestine. Aristobulus declared that all the
facts and details of the Jewish Scriptures were so many allegories,
concealing the most profound meanings, and that Plato had bor-
rowed from them all his finest ideas. Philo, who lived a century
after him, following the same theory, endeavored to show that the
Hebrew writings, by their system of allegories, were the true
source of all religious and philosophical doctrines. According to
him, the literal meaning is for the vulgar alone. Whoever has
meditated on philosophy, purified himself by virtue, and raised
himself by contemplation, to God and the intellectual world, and
received their inspiration, pierces trie gross envelope of the letter,
discovers a wholly different order of things, and is initiated into
mysteries, of which the elementary or literal instruction offers but
an imperfect image. A historical fact, a figure, a word, a letter, a
number, a rite, a custom, the parable or vision of a prophet, veils
the most profound truths ; and he who has the key of science will
interpret all according to the light he possesses.

Again we see the symbolism of Masonry, and the search of the
Candidate for light. "Let men of narrow minds withdraw," he
says, "with closed ears. We transmit the divine mysteries to

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 251

those who have received the sacred initiation, to those who prac-
tise true piety, and who are not enslaved by the empty trappings
of words or the preconceived opinions of the pagans."

To Philo, the Supreme Being was the Primitive Light, or the
Archetype of Light, Source whence the rays emanate that illu-
minate Souls. He was also the Soul of the Universe, and as such
acted in all its parts. He Himself fills and limits His whole Being.
His Powers and Virtues fill and penetrate all. These Powers
[Aura/nets, dunameis] are Spirits distinct from God, the "Ideas" of
Plato personified. He is without beginning, and lives in the pro-
totype of Time [auav, aion] .

His image is THE WORD [Aoyos], a form more brilliant than
fire; that not being the pure light. This LOGOS dwells in God;
for the Supreme Being makes to Himself within His Intelligence
the types or ideas of everything that is to become reality in this
World. The LOGOS is the vehicle by which God acts on the Uni-
verse, and may be compared to the speech of man.

The LOGOS being the World of Ideas [KOO-^"<- VOTJTOS], by means
whereof God has created visible things, He is the most ancient
God, in comparison with the World, which is the youngest pro-
duction. The LOGOS, Chief of Intelligence, of which He is the
general representative, is named Archangel, type and representa-
tive of all spirits, even those of mortals. He is also styled the
man-type and primitive man, Adam Kadmon.

God only is Wise. The wisdom of man is but the reflection and
image of that of God. He is the Father, and His WISDOM the
mother of creation: for He united Himself with WISDOM [2o<pia,
Sophia], and communicated to it the germ of creation, and it
brought forth the material world. He created the ideal world
only, and caused the material world to be made real after its type,
by His LOGOS, which is His speech, and at the same time the Idea
of Ideas, the Intellectual World. The Intellectual City was but
the Thought of the Architect, who meditated the creation, accord-
ing to that plan of the Material City.

The Word is not only the Creator, but occupies the place of the
Supreme Being. Through Him all the Powers and Attributes of
God act. On the other side, as first representative of the Human
Family, He is the Protector of men and their Shepherd.

God gives to man the Soul or Intelligence, which exists before
the body, and which he unites with the body. The reasoning

252 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Principle comes from God through the Word, and communes with
God and with the Word; but there is also in man an irrational
Principle, that of the inclinations and passions which produce
disorder, emanating from inferior spirits who fill the air as
ministers of God. The body, taken from the Earth, and the
irrational Principle that animates it concurrently with the ra-
tional Principle, are hated by God, while the rational soul which
He has given it, is, as it were, captive in this prison, this coffin,
that encompasses it. The present condition of man is not his
primitive condition, when he was the image of the Logos. He
has fallen from his first estate. But he may raise himself again,
by following the directions of WISDOM [Jfo^w.] and of the Angels
which God has commissioned to aid him in freeing himself from
the bonds of the body, and combating Evil, the existence whereof
God has permitted, to furnish him the means of exercising his
liberty. The souls that are purified, not by the Law but by light,
rise to the Heavenly regions, to enjoy there a perfect felicity.
Those that persevere in evil go from body to body, the seats of
passions and evil desires. The familiar lineaments of these doc-
trines will be recognized by all who read the Epistles of St. Paul,
who wrote after Philo, the latter living till the reign of Caligula,
and being the contemporary of Christ.

And the Mason is familiar with these doctrines of Philo : that
the Supreme Being is a centre of Light whose rays or emanations
pervade the Universe ; for that is the Light for which all Masonic
journeys are a search, and of which the sun and moon in our
Lodges are only emblems : that Light and Darkness, chief enemies
from the beginning of Time, dispute with each other the empire
of the world ; which we symbolize by the candidate wandering in
darkness and being brought to light : that the world was created,
not by the Supreme Being, but by a secondary agent, who is but
His WORD [the Aoyos], and by types which are but his ideas,
aided by an INTELLIGENCE, or WISDOM \_2otf!ta\, which gives one of
His Attributes ; in which we see the occult meaning of the ne-
cessity of recovering "the WORD" ; and of our two columns of
STRENGTH and WISDOM, which are also the two parallel lines that
bound the circle representing the Universe : that the visible world
is the image of the invisible world ; that the essence of the Human
Soul is the image of God, and it existed before the body ; that the
object of its terrestrial life is to disengage itself of its body or its

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 253

sepulchre ; and that it will ascend to the Heavenly regions when-
ever it shall be purified ; in which we see the meaning, now almost
forgotten in our Lodges, of the mode of preparation of the candi-
date for apprenticeship, and his tests and purifications in the first
Degree, according to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Philo incorporated in his eclecticism neither Egyptian nor Orien-
tal elements. But there were other Jewish Teachers in Alexandria
who did both. The Jews of Egypt were slightly jealous of, and a
little hostile to, those of Palestine, particularly after the erection
of the sanctuary at Leontopolis by the High-Priest Onias; and
therefore they admired and magnified those sages, who, like Jere-
miah, had resided in Egypt. "The wisdom of Solomon" was
written at Alexandria, and, in the time of St. Jerome, was attrib-
uted to Philo; but it contains principles at variance with his.
It personifies Wisdom, and draws between its children and the
Profane, the same line of demarcation that Egypt had long before
taught to the Jews. That distinction existed at the beginning of
the Mosaic creed. Moshah himself was an Initiate in the mysteries
of Egypt, as he was compelled to be, as the adopted son of the
daughter of Pharaoh, Thouoris, daughter of Sesostris-Ramses;
who, as her tomb and monuments show, was, in the right of her
infant husband, Regent of Lower Egypt or the Delta at the time
of the Hebrew Prophet's birth, reigning at Heliopolis. She was
also, as the reliefs on her tomb show, a Priestess of HATHOR and
NEITH, the two great primeval goddesses. As her adopted son,
living in her Palace and presence forty years, and during that
time scarcely acquainted with his brethren the Jews, the law of
Egypt compelled his initiation : and we find in many of his enact-
ments the intention of preserving, between the common people
and the Initiates, the line of separation which he found in Egypt.
Moshah and Aharun his brother, the whole series of High-Priests,
the Council of the 70 Elders, Salomoh and the entire succession
of Prophets, were in possession of a higher science; and of that
science Masonry is, at least, the lineal descendant. It was famili-
arly known as THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORD.

AM UN, at first the God of Lower Egypt only, where Moshah was
reared [a word that in Hebrew means Truth], was the Supreme
God. He was styled "the Celestial Lord, who sheds Light on
hidden things." He was the source of that divine life, of which
the crux aiisata is the symbol ; and the source of all power. He

J54 MORALS AND DOGMA.

united all the attributes that the Ancient Oriental Theosophy
assigned to the Supreme Being. He was the xtepcofia (Pleroma),
or "Fullness of things," for He comprehended in Himself every-
thing; and the LIGHT; for he was the Sun-God. He was un-
changeable in the midst of everything phenomenal in his worlds.
He created nothing ; but everything emanated from Him ; and of
Him all the other Gods were but manifestations.

The Ram was His living symbol ; which you see reproduced in
this Degree, lying on the book with seven seals on the tracing-
board. He caused the creation of the world by the Primitive
Thought [Emna, Ennoia] , or Spirit [Ilvev/wi, Pneuma] , that issued
from him by means of his Voice or the WORD ; and which Thought
or Spirit was personified as the Goddess NEITH. She, too, was a
divinity of Light, and mother of the Sun; and the Feast of
Lamps was celebrated in her honor at Sais. The Creative Power,
another manifestation of Deity, proceeding to the creation con-
ceived of in her, the Divine Intelligence, produced with its Word
the Universe, symbolized by an egg issuing from the mouth of
KNEPH ; from which egg came PHTHA, image of the Supreme
Intelligence as realized in the world, and the type of that mani-
fested in man ; the principal agent, also, of Nature, or the creative
and productive Fire. PHRE or RE, the Sun, or Celestial Light,
whose symbol was O, the point within a circle, was the son of
PHTHA ; and TIPHE, his wife, or the celestial firmament, with the
seven celestial bodies, animated by spirits of genii that govern
them, was represented on many of the monuments, clad in blue
or yellow, her garments sprinkled with stars, and accompanied by
the sun, moon, and five planets ; and she was the type of Wisdom,
and they of the Seven Planetary Spirits of the Gnostics, that with
her presided over and governed the sublunary world.

In this Degree, unknown for a hundred years to those who have
practised it, these emblems reproduced refer to these old doctrines.
The lamb, the yellow hangings strewed with stars, the seven
columns, candlesticks, and seals all recall them to us.

The Lion was the symbol of ATHOM-RE, the Great God of Up-
per Egypt; the Hawk, of RA or PHRE; fhe Eagle, of MEXDES;
the Bull, of APIS ; and three of these are seen under the platform
on which our altar stands.

The first HERMES was the INTELLIGENCE or WORD of God.
Moved with compassion for a race living without law, and wishing

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 255

to teach them that they sprang from His bosom, and to point out
to them the way that they should go [the books which the first
Hermes, the same with Enoch, had written on the mysteries of
divine science, in the sacred characters, being unknown to those
who lived after the flood], God sent to man OSIRIS and Isis, ac-
companied by THOTH, the incarnation or terrestrial repetition of
the first HERMES; who taught men the arts, science, and the cer-
emonies of religion; and then ascended to Heaven or the Moon.
OSIRIS was the Principle of Good. TYPHON, like AHRIMAN, was
the principle and source of all that is evil in the moral and phys-
ical order. Like the Satan of Gnosticism, he was confounded
with Matter.

From Egypt or Persia the new Platonists borrowed the idea, and
the Gnostics received it from them, that man, in his terrestrial
career, is successively under the influence of the Moon, of Mer-
cury, of Venus, of the Sun, of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn,
until he finally reaches the Elysian Fields ; an idea again symbol-
ized in the Seven Seals.

The Jews of Syria and Judea were the direct precursors of Gnos-
ticism ; and in their doctrines were ample oriental elements.
These Jews had had with the Orient, at two different periods, inti-
mate relations, familiarizing them with the doctrines of Asia, and
especially of Chaldea and Persia ; — their forced residence in Cen-
tral Asia under the Assyrians and Persians; and their voluntary
dispersion over the whole East, when subjects of the Seleucidae
and the Romans. Living near two-thirds of a century, and many
of them long afterward, in Mesopotamia, the cradle of their race ;
speaking the same language, and their children reared with those
of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, and receiving
from them their names (as the case of Danayal, who was called
Bseltasatsar, proves), they necessarily adopted many of the doc-
trines of their conquerors. Their descendants, as Azra and Na-
hamaiah show us, hardly desired to leave Persia, when they were
allowed to do so. They had a special jurisdiction, and governors
and judges taken from their own people; many of them held high
office, and their children were educated with those of the highest
nobles. Danayal was the friend and minister of the King, and
the Chief of the College of the Magi at Babylon ; if we may be-
lieve the book which bears his name, and trust to the incidents
related in its highly figurative and imaginative style. Mordecai,

256 MORALS AND DOGMA.

too, occupied a high station, no less than that of Prime Minister,
and Esther or Astar, his cousin, was the Monarch's wife.

The Magi of Babylon were expounders of figurative writings,
interpreters of nature, and of dreams, — astronomers and divines ;
and from their influences arose among the Jews, after their rescue
from captivity, a number of sects, and a new exposition, the mys-
tical interpretation, with all its wild fancies and infinite caprices.
The Aions of the Gnostics, the Ideas of Plato, the Angels of the
Jews, and the Demons of the Greeks, all correspond to the
Ferouers of Zoroaster.

A great number of Jewish families remained permanently in
their new country ; and one of the most celebrated of their schools
was at Babylon. They were soon familiarized with the doctrine
of Zoroaster, which itself was more ancient than Kuros. From
the system of the Zend-Avesta they borrowed, and subsequently
gave large development to, everything that could be reconciled
with their own faith ; and these additions to the old doctrine were
soon spread, by the constant intercourse of commerce, into Syria
and Palestine.

In the Zend-Avesta, God is Illimitable Time. No origin can be
assigned to Him: He is so entirely enveloped in His glory, His
nature and attributes are so inaccessible to human Intelligence,
that He can be only the object of a silent Veneration. Creation
took place by emanation from Him. The first emanation was the
primitive Light, and from that the King of Light, ORMUZD. By
the "WORD/' Ormuzd created the world pure. He is its pre-
server and judge; a Being Holy and Heavenly; Intelligence and
Knowledge ; the First-born of Time without limits ; and invested
with all the Powers of the Supreme Being.

Still he is, strictly speaking, the Fourth Being. He had a
Ferouer, a pre-existing Soul [in the language of Plato, a type or
ideal] ; and it is said of Him, that He existed from the beginning,
in the primitive Light. But, that Light being but an element,
and His Ferouer a type, he is, in ordinary language, the First-born
of ZEROUANE-AKHERENE. Behold, again, "THE WORD"
of Masonry ; the Man, on the Tracing-Board of this Degree ; the
LIGHT toward which all Masons travel.

He created after his own image, six Genii "called Amshaspands,
who surround his Throne, are his organs of communication wkh
inferior spirits and men, transmit to Him their prayers, solicit for

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 257

them His favors, and serve them as models of purity and perfec-
tion. Thus we have the Demiourgos of Gnosticism, and the six
Genii that assist him. These are the Hebrew Archangels of the
Planets.

The names of these Amshaspands are Bahman, Ardibehest,
Schariver, Sapandomad, Khordad, and Amerdad.

The fourth, the Holy SAPANDOMAD, created the first man and
woman.

Then ORMUZD created 28 Izeds, of whom MITHRAS is the chief.
They watch, with Ormusd and the Amshaspands, over the happi-
ness, purity, and preservation of the world, which is under their
government; and they are also models for mankind and interpre-
ters of men's prayers. With Mithras and Ormuzd, they make a
pleroma [or complete number] of 30, corresponding to the thirty
Aions of the Gnostics, and to the ogdoade, dodecade, and decade of
the Egyptians. Mithras was the Sun-God, invoked with, and
soon confounded with him, becoming the object of a special wor-
ship, and eclipsing Ormusd himself.

The third order of pure spirits is more numerous. They are
the Ferouers, the THOUGHTS of Ormuzd, or the IDEAS which he
conceived before proceeding to the creation of -things. They too
are superior to men. They protect them during their life on
earth ; they will purify them from evil at their resurrection. They
are their tutelary genii, from the fall to the complete regeneration.

AHRIMAN, second-born of the Primitive Light, emanated from
it, pure like ORMUZD; but, proud and ambitious, yielded to jeal-
ousy of the First-born. For his hatred and pride, the Eternal
condemned him to dwell, for 12,000 years, in that part of space
where no ray of light reaches ; the black empire of darkness. In
that period the struggle between Light and Darkness, Good and
Evil, will be terminated.

AHRIMAN scorned to submit, and took the field against OR-
MUZD. To the good spirits created by his Brother, he opposed an
innumerable army of Evil Ones. To the seven Amshaspands he
opposed seven Archdevs, attached to the seven Planets ; to the
Izeds and Ferouers an equal number of Devs, which brought upon
the world all moral and physical evils. Hence Poverty, Maladies,
Impurity, Envy, Chagrin, Drunkenness, Falsehood, Calumny, and
their horrible array.

The image of Ahriman was the Dragon, confounded by the

258 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Jews with Satan and the Serpent-Tempter. After a reign of 3000
years, Ormuzd had created the Material World, in six periods,
calling successively into existence the Light, Water, Earth, plants,
animals, and Man. But Ahriman concurred in creating the earth
and water; for darkness was already an element, and Ormuzd
could not exclude its Master. So also the two concurred in pro-
ducing Man. Ormuzd produced, by his Will and Word, a Being
that was the type and source of universal life for everything that
exists under Heaven. He placed in man a pure principle, or Life,
proceeding from the Supreme Being. But Ahriman destroyed
that pure principle, in the form" wherewith it was clothed ; and
when Ormuzd had made, of its recovered and purified essence, the
first man and woman, Ahriman seduced and tempted them with
wine and fruits ; the woman yielding first.

Often, during the three latter periods of 3000 years each, Ahri-
man and Darkness are, and are to be, triumphant. But the pure
souls are assisted by the Good Spirits; the Triumph of Good is
decreed by the Supreme Being, and the period of that triumph
will infallibly arrive. When the world shall be most afflicted with
the evils poured out upon it by the spirits of perdition, three
Prophets will come to bring relief to mortals. SOSIOSCH, the
principal of the Three, will regenerate the earth, and restore to it
its primitive beauty, strength, and purity. He will judge the good
and the wicked. After the universal resurrection of the good, he
will conduct them to a home of everlasting happiness. Ahriman,
his evil demons, and all wicked men, will also be purified in a tor-
rent of melted metal. The law of Ormuzd will reign everywhere ;
all men will be happy ; all, enjoying unalterable bliss, will sing
with Sosiosch the praises of the Supreme Being.

These doctrines, the details of which were sparingly borrowed
by the Pharisaic Jews, were much more fully adopted by the
Gnostics ; who taught the restoration of all things, their return to
their original pure condition, the happiness of those to be saved,
and their admission to the feast of Heavenly Wisdom.

The doctrines of Zoroaster came originally from Bactria, an
Indian Province of Persia. Naturally, therefore, it would include
Hindu or Buddhist elements, as it did. The fundamental idea of
Buddhism was, matter subjugating the intelligence, and intelli-
gence freeing itself from that slavery. Perhaps something came
to Gnosticism from China. "Before the chaos which preceded

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 259

the birth of Heaven and Earth," says Lao-Tseu, "a single Being
existed, immense and silent, immovable and ever active — the
mother of the Universe. I know not its name : but I designate it
by the word Reason. Man has his type and model in the Earth ;
Earth in Heaven ; Heaven in Reason ; and Reason in Itself."
Here again are the Ferouers, the Ideas, the Aions — the REASON
or INTELLIGENCE [Ewwo], SILENCE [-^Y^], WORD [JofocJ, and
WISDOM \_Io<pta\ of the Gnostics.

The dominant system among the Jews after their captivity was
that of the Pharoschim or Pharisees. Whether their name was
derived from that of the Parsees,or followers of Zoroaster, or from
some other source, it is certain that they had borrowed much of
their doctrine from the Persians. Like them they claimed to have
the exclusive and mysterious knowledge, unknown to the mass.
Like them they taught that a constant ,war was waged between
the Empire of Good and that of Evil. Like them they attributed
the sin and fall of man to the demons and their chief; and like
them they admitted a special protection of the righteous by in-
ferior beings, agents of Jehovah. All their doctrines on these sub-
jects were at bottom those of the Holy Books; but singularly
developed; and the Orient was evidently the source from which
those developments came.

They styled themselves Interpreters; a name indicating their
claim to the exclusive possession of the true meaning of the Holy
Writings, by virtue of the oral tradition which Moses had received
on Mount Sinai, and which successive generations of Initiates had
transmitted, as they claimed, unaltered, unto them. Their very
costume, their belief in the influences of the stars, and in the im-
mortality and transmigration of souls, their system of angels and
their astronomy, were all foreign.

Sadduceeism arose merely from an opposition essentially Jewish,
to these foreign teachings, and that mixture of doctrines, adopted
by the Pharisees, and which constituted the popular creed.

We come at last to the Essenes and Therapeuts, with whom this
Degree is particularly concerned. That intermingling of oriental
and occidental rites, of Persian and Pythagorean opinions, which
we have pointed out in the doctrines of Philo, is unmistakable in
the creeds of these two sects.

They were less distinguished by metaphysical speculations than
by simple meditations and moral practices. But the latter always

2OO MORALS AND DOGMA.

partook of the Zoroastrian principle, that it was necessary to free
the soul from the trammels and influences of matter; which led
to a system of abstinence and maceration entirely opposed to the
ancient Hebraic ideas, favorable as they were to physical pleasures.

In general, the life and manners of these mystical associa-
tions, as Philo and Josephus describe them, and particularly their
prayers at sunrise, seem the image of what the Zend-Avesta pre-
scribes to the faithful adorer or Ormuzd; and some of their
observances cannot otherwise be explained.

The Therapeuts resided in Egypt, in the neighborhood of Alex-
andria; and the Essenes in Palestine, in the vicinity of the Dead
Sea. But there was nevertheless a striking coincidence in their
ideas, readily explained by attributing it to a foreign influence.
The Jews of Egypt, under the influence of the School of Alexan-
dria, endeavored in general to make their doctrines harmonize
with the traditions of Greece; and thence came, in the doctrines
of the Therapeuts, as stated by Philo, the many analogies between
the Pythagorean and Orphic ideas, on one side, and those of Ju-
daism on the other : while the Jews of Palestine, having less com-
munication with Greece, or contemning its teachings, rather im-
bibed the Oriental doctrines, which they drank in at the source,
and with which their relations with Persia made them familiar.
This attachment was particularly shown in the Kabalah, which
belonged rather to Palestine than to Egypt, though extensively
known in the latter; and furnished the Gnostics with some of
their most striking theories.

It is a significant fact, that while Christ spoke often of the
Pharisees and Sadducees, He never once mentioned the Essenes,
bet ween whose doctrines and His there was so great a resemblance,
and, in many points, so perfect an identity. Indeed, they are not
named, nor even distinctly alluded to, anywhere in the New Tes-
tament.

John, the son of a Priest who ministered in the Temple at
Jerusalem, and whose mother was of the family of Aharun, was in
the deserts until the day of his showing unto Israel. He drank
neither wine nor strong drink. Clad in hair-cloth, and with a
girdle of leather. and feeding upon such food as the desert afforded,
he preached, in the country about Jordan, the baptism of repent-
ance, for the remission of sins ; that is, the necessity of repent-
ance proven by reformation. He taught the people charity and

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 26l

liberality; the publicans, justice, equity, and fair dealing; the
soldiery, peace, truth, and contentment; to do violence to none,
accuse none falsely, and be content with their pay. He incul-
cated the necessity of a virtuous life, and the folly of trusting to
their descent from Abraham.

He denounced both Pharisees and Sadducees as a generation of
vipers, threatened with the anger of God. He baptized those who
confessed their sins. He preached in the desert ; and therefore in
the country where the Essenes lived, professing the same doctrines.
He was imprisoned before Christ began to preach. Matthew men-
tions him without preface or explanation; as if, apparently, his
history was too well known to need any. "In those days," he
says, "came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of
Judea." His disciples frequently fasted; for we find them with
the Pharisees coming to Jesus to inquire why His Disciples did
not fast as often as they ; and He did not denounce them, as His
habit was to denounce the Pharisees; but answered them kindly
and gently.

From his prison, John sent two of his disciples to inquire of
Christ : "Art thou he that is to come, or do we look for another ?"
Christ referred them to his miracles as an answer; and declared
to the people that John was a prophet, and more than a prophet,
and that no greater man had ever been born ; but that the hum-
blest Christian was his superior. He declared him to be Elias, who
was to come.

John had denounced to Herod his marriage with his brother's
wife as unlawful ; and for this he was imprisoned, and finally exe-
cuted to gratify her. His disciples buried him; and Herod and
others thought he had risen from the dead and appeared again in
the person of Christ. The people all regarded John as a prophet ;
and Christ silenced the Priests and Elders by asking them whether
he was inspired. They feared to excite the anger of the people by
saying that he was not. Christ declared that he came "in the way
of righteousness" ; and that the lower classes believed him, though
the Priests and Pharisees did not.

Thus John, who was often consulted by Herod, and to whom
that monarch showed great deference, and was often governed by
his advice ; whose doctrine prevailed very extensively among the
people and the publicans, taught some creed older than Chris-
tianity. That is plain : and it is equally plain, that the very large

262 MORALS AND DOGMA.

body of the Jews that adopted his doctrines, were neither Phari-
sees nor Sadducees, but the humble, common people. They must,
therefore, have been Essenes. It is plain, too, that Christ applied
for baptism as a sacred rite, well known and long practised. It
was becoming to him, he said, to fulfill all righteousness.

In the i8th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read thus:
"And a certain Jew, named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an elo-
quent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This
man zvas instructed in the way of the Lord, and, being fervent in
spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, know-
ing only the baptism of John; and he began to speak boldly in
the synagogue ; whom, when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they
took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God
more perfectly."

Translating this from the symbolic and figurative language
into the true ordinary sense of the Greek text, it reads thus : "And
a certain Jew, named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent
man, and of extensive learning, came to Ephesus. He had learned
in the mysteries the true doctrine in regard to God ; and, being a
zealous enthusiast, he spoke and taught diligently the truths in
regard to the Deity, having received no other baptism than that
of John." He knew nothing in regard to Christianity; for he
had resided in Alexandria, and had just then come to Ephesus;
being, probably, a disciple of Philo, and a Therapeut.

"That, in all times," says St. Augustine, "is the Christian reli-
gion, which to kn~w and follow is the most sure and certain
health, called according to that name, but not according to the
thing itself, of which it is the name ; for the thing itself, which
is now called the Christian religion, really zvas known to the An-
cients, nor was wanting at any time from the beginning of the
human race, until the time when Christ came in the flesh; from
whence the true religion, which had previously existed, began to
be called Christian ; and this in 0ur days is the Christian religion,
not as having been wanting in former times, but as having, in
later times, received this name." The disciples were first called
"Christians," at Antioch, when Barnabas and Paul began to
preach there.

The Wandering or Itinerant Jews or Exorcists," who assumed to
employ the Sacred Name in exorcising evil spirits, were no doubt
Therapeutae or Essenes.

KNIGHT OF 1 HE EAST AND WEST. 263

"And it came to pass," we read in the igih chapter of the Acts,
verses I to 4, "that while A^ollos was at Corinth, Paul, having
passed through the upper pai ts of Asia Minor, came to Ephesus ;
and finding certain disciples, he said to them, 'Have ye received
the Holy Ghost since ye became Believers?' And they said unto
him, 'We have not so mucn as heard that there is any Holy
Ghost.' And he said to them, 'In what, then, were you baptized ?'
And they said 'In John's Baptism.' Then said Paul, 'John in-
deed baptized with the baptism of repentence, saying to the people
that they should believe in Him who was to come after him, that
is, in Jesus Christ.' When they heard this, they were baptized in
the name of the Lord Jesus."

This faith, taught by John, and so nearly Christianity, could
have been nothing but the doctrine of the Essenes ; and there can
be no doubt that John belonged to that sect. The place where he
preached, his macerations and frugal diet, the doctrines he taught,
all prove it conclusively. There was no other sect to which he
could have belonged; certainly none so numerous as his, except
the Essenes.

We find, from the two letters written by Paul to the brethren at
Corinth, that City of Luxury and Corruption, that there were
contentions among them. Rival sects had already, about the 57th
year of our era, reared their banners there, as followers, some of
Paul, some of Apollos, and some of Cephas. Some of them de-
nied the resurrection. Paul urged them to adhere to the doctrines
taught by himself, and had sent Timothy to them to bring them
afresh to their recollection.

According to Paul, Christ was to come again. He was to put
an end to all other Principles and Powers, and finally to Death,
and then be Himself once more merged in God ; who should then
be all in all.

The forms and ceremonies of the Essenes were symbolical.
They had, according to Philo the Jew, four Degrees ; the members
being divided into two Orders, the Practiei and Therapeutici;
the latter being the contemplative and medical Brethren ; and the
former the active, practical, business men. They were Jews by
birth; and had a greater affection for each other than the mem-
bers of any other sect. Their brotherly love was intense. They
fulfilled the Christian law, "Love one another." They despised
riches. No one was to be found among them, having more than
18

264 MORALS AND DOGMA.

another. The possessions of one were intermingled with those of
the others ; so that they all had but one patrimony, and were
brethren. Their piety toward God was extraordinary. Before
sunrise they never spake a word about profane matters; but put
up certain prayers which they had received from their forefathers.
At dawn of day, and before it was light, their prayers and hymns
ascended to Heaven. They were eminently faithful and true, and
the Ministers of Peace. They had mysterious ceremonies, and
initiations into their mysteries; and the Candidate promised that
he would ever practise fidelity to all men, and especially to those
in authority, "because no one obtains the government without
God's assistance."

Whatever they said, was firmer than an oath ; but they avoided
swearing, and esteemed it worse than perjury. They were simple
in their diet and mode of living, bore torture with fortitude, and
despised death. They cultivated the science of medicine and were
very skillful. They deemed it a good omen to dress in white robes.
They had their own courts, and passed righteous judgments. They
kept the Sabbath more rigorously than the Jews.

Their chief towns were Engaddi, near the Dead Sea, and
Hebron. Engaddi was about 30 miles southeast from Jerusalem,
and Hebron about 20 miles south of that city. Josephus and
Eusebius speak of them as an ancient sect; and they were no
doubt the first among the Jews to embrace Christianity: with
whose faith and doctrine their own tenets had so many points of
resemblance, and were indeed in a great measure the same. Pliny
regarded them as a very ancient people.

In their devotions they turned toward the rising sun; as the
Jews generally did toward the Temple. But they were no idola-
ters ; for they observed the law of Moses with scrupulous fidelity.
They held all things in common, and despised riches, their wants
being supplied by the administration of Curators or Stewards.
The Tetractys, composed of round dots instead of j«ds, was re-
vered among them. This being a Pythagorean symbol, evidently
shows their connection with the school of Pythagoras; but their
peculiar tenets more resemble those of Confucius and Zoroaster;
and probably were adopted while they were prisoners in Persia;
which explains their turning toward the Sun in prayer.

Their demeanor was sober and chaste. They submitted to the
superintendence of governors whom they appointed over them-

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 265

selves. The whole of their time was spent in labor, meditation,
and prayer ; and they were most sedulously attentive to every call
of justice and humanity, and every moral duty. They believed
in the unity of God. They supposed the souls of men to have
fallen, by a disastrous fate, from the regions of purity and light,
into the bodies which they occupy ; during their continuance in
which they considered them confined as in a prison. Therefore
they did not believe in the resurrection of the body; but in that
of the soul only. They believed in a future state of rewards and
punishments; and they disregarded the ceremonies or external
forms enjoined in the law of Moses to be observed in the worship
of God ; holding that the words of that lawgiver were to be un-
derstood in a mysterious and recondite sense, and not according to
their literal meaning. They offered no sacrifices, except at home ;
and by meditation they endeavored, as far as possible, to isolate
the soul from the body, and carry it back to God.

Eusebius broadly admits "that the ancient Therapeutse were
Christians ; and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and
Epistles."

The ESSENES were of the Eclectic Sect of Philosophers, and
held PLATO in the highest esteem ; they believed that true philos-
ophy, the greatest and most salutary gift of God to mortals, was
scattered, in various portion?, through all the different Sects ; and
that it was, consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it
from the several quarters where it lay dispersed, and to employ
it, thus reunited, in destroying the dominion of impiety and
vice.

The great festivals of the Solstices were observed in a distin-
guished manner by the Essenes ; as would naturally be supposed,
from the fact that they reverenced the Sun, not as a god, but as a
symbol of light and fire ; the fountain of which, the Orientals
supposed God to be. They lived in continence and abstinence,
and had establishments similar to the monasteries of the early
Christians.

The writings of the Essenes were full of mysticism, parables,
enigmas, and allegories. They believed in the esoteric and exote-
ric meanings of the Scriptures ; and, as we have already said, they
had a warrant for that in the Scriptures themselves. They found
it in the Old Testament, as the Gnostics found it in the New.
The Christian writers, and even Christ himself, recognized it as a

266 MORALS AND DOGMA.

truth, that all Scripture had an inner and an outer meaning. Thus
we find it said as follows, in one of the Gospels :

"Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of
God ; but unto men that are without, all these things are done in
parables ; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing
they may hear and not understand. . . . And the disciples came
and said unto him, 'Why speakest Thou the truth in parables ?'-
He answered and said unto them, 'Because it is given unto you to
know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is
not given.' "

Paul, in the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, speak-
ing of the simplest facts of the Old Testament, asserts that they
are an allegory. In the 3d chapter of the second letter to the
Corinthians, he declares himself a minister of the New Testament,
appointed by God; "Not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the
letter killeth." Origen and St. Gregory held that the Gospels
were not to be taken in their literal sense; and Athanasius ad-
monishes us that "Should we understand sacred writ according to
the letter, we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies."

Eusebius said, "Those who preside over the Holy Sepulchres,
philosophize over them, and expound their literal sense by alle-
gory."

The sources of our knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines, are
the books of Jezirah and Sohar, the former drawn up in the second
century, and the latter a little later; but containing materials
much older than themselves. In their most characteristic ele-
ments, they go back to the time of the exile. In them, as in the
teachings of Zoroaster, everything that exists emanated from a
source of infinite LIGHT. Before everything, existed THE AN-
CIENT OF DAYS, the KING OF LIGHT; a title often given to the
Creator in the Zend-Avesta and the code of the Sabceans. With
the idea so expressed is connected the pantheism of India. THE
KING OF LIGHT, THE ANCIENT, is ALL THAT is. He is not only
the real cause of all Existences; he is Infinite [AINSOPH]. He is
HIMSELF : there is nothing in Him that We can call Thou.

In the Indian doctrine, not only is the Supreme Being the real
cause of all, but he is the only real Existence: all the rest is illu-
sion. In the Kabalah, as in the Persian and. Gnostic doctrines,
He is the Supreme Being unknown to all, the "Unknown Father."
The world is his revelation, and subsists only in Him. His attri-

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 267

butes are reproduced there, with different modifications, and in
different degrees, so that the Universe is His Holy Splendor : it
is but His Mantle ; but it must be revered in silence. All beings
have emanated from the Supreme Being : The nearer a being is to
Him, the more perfect it is ; the more remote in the scale, the less
its purity.

A ray of Light, shot from the Deity, is the cause and principle
of all that exists. It is at once Father and Mother of All, in the
sublimest sense. It penetrates everything ; and without it nothing
can exist an instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the
two parts of the word I.'. H.'. U.'. H.'. emanated the FIRST-BORN
of God, the Universal FORM, in which are contained all beings ;
the Persian and Platonic Archetype of things, united with the
Infinite by the primitive ray of Light.

This First-Born is the Creative Agent, Conservator, and ani-
mating Principle of the Universe. It is THE LIGHT OF LIGHT. It
possesses the three Primitive Forces of the Divinity, LIGHT, SPIRIT,
and LIFE [<I>a)s, Hvevfid, and Z<mj\. As it has received what it
gives, Light and Life, it is equally considered as the generative
and conceptive Principle, the Primitive Man, ADAM KADMON.
As such, it has revealed itself in ten emanations or Sephiroth,
which are not ten different beings, nor even beings at all ; but
sources of life, vessels of Omnipotence, and types of Creation.
They are Sovereignty or Will, Wisdom, Intelligence, Benignity,
Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Permanency, and Empire. These
are attributes of God ; and this idea, that God reveals Himself by
His attributes, and that the human mind cannot perceive or dis-
cern God Himself, in his works, but only his mode of manifesting
Himself, is a profound Truth. We know of the Invisible only
what the Visible reveals.

Wisdom was called Nous and LOGOS [Noiis and Ao^o^}, INTEL-
LECT or the WORD. Intelligence, source of the oil of anointing,
responds to the Holy Ghost of the Christian Faith.

Beauty is represented by green and yellow. Victory is YA-
HOVAH-TsABAOTH, the column on the right hand, the column
Jachin: Glory is the column Boas, on the left hand. And thus
our symbols appear again in the Kabalah. And again the LIGHT,
the object of our labors, appears as the creative power of Deity.
The circle, also, was the special symbol of the first Sephirah, Ke-
ther, or the Crown.

268 MORALS AND DOGMA.

We do not further follow the Kabalah in its four Worlds of
Spirits, Aziluth, Briah, Yesirah, and Asiah, or of emanation, crea-
tion, formation, and fabrication, one inferior to and one emerging
from the other, the superior always enveloping the inferior; its
doctrine that, in all that exists, there is nothing purely material ;
that all comes from God, and in all He proceeds by irradiation ;
that everything subsists by the Divine ray that penetrates crea-
tion ; and all is united by the Spirit of God, which is the life of
life ; so that all is God ; the Existences that inhabit the four
worlds, inferior to each other in proportion to their distance from
the Great King of Light: the contest between the good and evil
Angels and Principles, to endure until the Eternal Himself comes
to end it and re-establish the primitive harmony ; the four distinct
parts of the Soul of Man ; and the migrations of impure souls,
until they are sufficiently purified to share with the Spirits of
Light the contemplation of the Supreme Being whose Splendor
fills the LTniverse.

The WORD was also found in the Phoenician Creed. As in all
those of Asia, a WORD of God, written in starry characters, by the
planetary Divinities, and communicated by the Demi-Gods, as a
profound mystery, to the higher classes of the human race, to be
communicated by them to mankind, created the world. The faith
of the Phoenicians was an emanation from that ancient worship of
the Stars, which in the creed of Zoroaster alone, is connected with
a faith in one God. Light and Fire are the most important agents
in the Phoenician faith. There is a race of children of the Light.
They adored the Heaven with its Lights, deeming it the Supreme
God.

Everything emanates from a Single Principle, and a Primitive
Love, which is the Moving Power of All and governs all. Light,
by its union with Spirit, whereof it is but the vehicle or symbol,
is the Life of everything, and penetrates everything. It should
therefore be respected and honored everywhere; for everywhere
it governs and controls.

The Chaldaic and Jerusalem Paraphrasts endeavored to render
the phrase, DEBAR- YAHOVAH [mrf *O"l] , the "Word of God, a per-
sonalty, wherever they met with it. The phrase, "And God
created man," is, in the Jerusalem Targum, "And the Word of
IHUH created man."

So, in xxviii. Gen. 20, 21, where Jacob says: If God [Dv6tf

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 269

IHIH ALHIM] will be with me ... then shall IHUH be my ALHIM
[DT^N^ *h mrP nVH; UHIH IHUH Li LALHIM] ; and this stone shall
be God's House [CM^« JT3 nTP . . IHIH BITH ALHIM] : Onkelos
paraphrases it, "If the word of IHUH will be my help .... then
the Word of IHUH shall be my God."

So, in iii. Gen. 8, for "The Voice of the Lord God" [DT6« niPP,
IHUH ALHIM], we have, "The Voice of the Word of IHUH."

In ix. Wisdom, i, "O God of my Fathers and Lord of Mercy !
who hast made all things with thy word. . iv \6yov 0o>j."

And in xviii. Wisdom, 15, "Thine Almighty Word [Aoyos] leaped
down from Heaven."

Philo speaks of the Word as being the same with God. So in sev-
eral places he calls it "Sevrcpos ®etos Aoyos," the Second Divinity ;
''lexa>u TOD 6eout" the Image of God: the Divine Word that made
all things : "the mrapx°s/' substitute, of God ; and the like.

Thus, when John commenced to preach, had been for ages
agitated, by the Priests and Philosophers of the East and West,
the great questions concerning the eternity or creation of matter :
immediate or intermediate creation of the Universe by the Su-
preme God; the Origin, object, and final extinction of evil; the
relations between the intellectual and • material worlds, and be-
tween God and man; and the creation, fall, redemption, and
restoration to his first estate, of man.

The Jewish doctrine, differing in this from all the other Oriental
creeds, and even from the Alohayistic legend with which the book
of Genesis commences, attributed the creation to the immediate
action of the Supreme Being. The Theosophists of the other
Eastern Peoples interposed more than one intermediary between
God and the world. To place between them but a single Being,
to suppose for the production ofMhe world but a single interme-
diary, was, in their eyes, to lower the Supreme Majesty. The
interval between God, who is perfect Purity, and matter, which is
base and foul, was too great for them to clear it at a single step.
Even in the Occident, neither Plato nor Philo could thus im-
poverish the Intellectual World.

Thus, Cerinthus of Ephesus, with most of the Gnostics, Philo,
the Kabalah, the Zend-Avesta, the Puranas, and all the Orient,
deemed the distance and antipathy between the Supreme Being
and the material world too great, to attribute to the former the
creation of the latter. Below, and emanating from, or created

2/O MORALS AND DOGMA.

by, the Ancient of Days, the Central Light, the Beginning, or
First Principle [ApxTj], one> two, or more Principles, Existences, or
Intellectual Beings were imagined, to some one or more of whom
[without any immediate creative act on the part of the Great
Immovable, Silent Deity], the immediate creation of the material
and mental universe was due.

We have already spoken of many of the speculations on this
point. To some, the world was created by the LOGOS or WORD,
first manifestation of, or emanation from, the Deity. To others,
the beginning of creation was by the emanation of a ray of
LIGHT, creating the principle of Light and Life. The Primitive
THOUGHT, creating the inferior Deities, a succession of INTELLI-
GENCES, the lynges of Zoroaster, his Amshaspands, Izeds, and
Ferouers, the Ideas of Plato, the Aions of the Gnostics, the
Angels of the Jews, the Nous, the Demiourgos, the DIVINE REA-
SON, the Powers or Forces of Philo, and the Alohayim, Forces or
Superior Gods of the ancient legend with which Genesis begins, —
to these and other intermediaries the creation was owing. No re-
straints were laid on the Fancy and the Imagination. The veriest
Abstractions became Existences and Realities. The attributes of
God, personified, became Powers, Spirits, Intelligences.

God was the Light of Light, Divine Fire, the Abstract Intellec-
tuality, the Root or Germ of the Universe. Simon Magus, founder
of the Gnostic faith, and many of the early Judaizing Christians,
admitted that the manifestations of the Supreme Being, as FATHER,
or JEHOVAH, SON or CHRIST, and HOLY SPIRIT, were only so many
different modes of Existence, or Forces [Sum/teis] of the same God.
To others they were, as were the multitude of Subordinate Intelli-
gences, real and distinct beings.

The Oriental imagination revelled in the creation of these Infe-
rior Intelligences, Powers of Good and Evil, and Angels. We
have spoken of those imagined by the Persians and the Kabalists.
In the Talmud, every star, every country, every town, and almost
every tongue has a Prince of Heaven as its Protector. JEHUEL is
the guardian of fire, and MICHAEL of water. Seven spirits assist
each; those of fire being Seraphiel, Gabriel, '-Nitriel, Tammael,
Tchimschiel, Hadarniel, and Sarniel. These seven are represented
by the square columns of this Degree, while the-polumns JACHIN
and BOAZ represent the angels of fire and water. But the col-
umns are not representatives of these alone.

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND \VEST. 2/1

To Basilides, God was without name, uncreated, at first contain-
ing and concealing in Himself the Plenitude of His Perfections ;
and when these are by Him displayed and manifested, there result
as many particular Existences, all analogous to Him, and still and
always Him. To the Essenes and the Gnostics, the East and the
West both devised this faith; that the Ideas, Conceptions, or
Manifestations of the Deity were so many Creations, so many Be-
ings, all God, nothing without Him, but more than what we now
understand by the word ideas. They emanated from and were
again merged in God. They had a kind of middle existence be-
tween our modern ideas, and the intelligences or ideas, elevated to
the rank of genii, of the Oriental mythology.

These personified attributes of Deity, in the theory of Basilides,
were the UpwTOfovoz or First-born, Nous [Nous or Mind] : from it
emanates Aoyos [Logos, or THE WORD] from it ^pdvT/cns : [Phro-
nesis, Intellect} : from it Eoyia [Sophia, Wisdom] : from it Avva/u?
[Dunamis, Power] : and from it Aixaiooi;^ [Dikaiosune, Right-
eousness] : to which latter the Jews gave the name of Etp^n;
[Eirene, Peace, or Calm], the essential characteristic of Divinity,
and harmonious effect of all His perfections. The whole number
of successive emanations was 365, expressed by the Gnostics, in
Greek letters, by the mystic word ABPAHA- [Abraxas] ; desig-
nating God as manifested, or the aggregate of his manifestations ;
but not the Supreme and Secret God Himself. These three hun-
dred and sixty-five Intelligences compose altogether the Fullness
or Plenitude [UXrjpwfia] of the Divine Emanations.

With the Ophites, a sect of the Gnostics, there were seven infe-
rior spirits [inferior to laldabaoth, the Demiourgos or Actual Cre-
ator] : Michael, Suriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Thauthabaoth, Erataoth,
and Athaniel, the genii of the stars called the Bull, the Dog, the
Lion, the Bear, the Serpent, the Eagle, and the Ass that formerly
figured in the constellation Cancer, and symbolized respectively
by those animals ; as laldabaoth, loo, Adonal, Elot, Oral, and As-
taphai were the genii of Saturn, the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter,
Venus, and Mercury.

The WORD appears in all these creeds. It is the Ormuzd of
Zoroaster, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah, the Notts of Platonism
and Philonism, and the Sophia or Demiourgos of the Gnostics.

And all these creeds, while admitting these different manifesta-
tions of the Supreme Being, held that His identity was immutable

272 MORALS AND DOGMA.

and permanent. That was Plato's distinction between the Being
always the same [TO ou] and the perpetual flow of things inces-
santly changing, the Genesis.

The belief in dualism in some shape, was universal. Those
who held that everything emanated from God, aspired to God, and
re-entered into God, believed that, among those emanations were
two adverse Principles, of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil.
This prevailed in Central Asia and in Syria; while in Egypt it
assumed the form of Greek speculation. In the former, a second
Intellectual Principle was admitted, active in its Empire of Dark-
ness, audacious against the Empire of Light. So the Persians and
Sabeans understood it. In Egypt, this second Principle was Mat-
ter, as the word was used by the Platonic School, with its sad at-
tributes, Vacuity, Darkness, and Death. In their theory, matter
could be animated only by the low communication of a principle
of divine life. It resists the influences that would spiritualize it.
That resisting Power is Satan, the rebellious Matter, Matter that
does not partake of God.

To many there were two Principles; the Unknown Father, or
Supreme and Eternal God, living in the centre of the Light,
happy in the perfect purity of His being; the other, eternal Mat-
ter, that inert, shapeless, darksome mass, which they considered as
the source of all evils, the mother and dwelling-place of Satan.

To Philo and the Platonists, there was a Soul of the world, cre-
ating visible things, and active in them, as agent of the Supreme
Intelligence ; realizing therein the ideas communicated to Him by
that Intelligence, and which sometimes excel His conceptions, but
which He executes without comprehending them.

The Apocalypse or Revelations, by whomever written, belongs
to the Orient and to extreme antiquity. It reproduces what is far
older than itself. It paints, with the strongest colors that the Ori-
ental genius ever employed, the closing scenes of the great strug-
gle of Light, and Truth, and Good, against Darkness, Error, and
Evil ; personified in that between the New Religion on one side,
and Paganism and Judaism on the other. It is a particular appli-
cation of the ancient myth of Ormuzd and his .Genii against. Ahri-
man and his Devs ; and it celebrates the final triumph of Truth
against the combined powers of men and demons. The ideas and
imagery are borrowed from every quarter ; and allusions are found
in it to the doctrines of all ages. We are continually reminded

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 273

of the Zend-Avesta, the Jewish Codes, Philo, and the Gnosis.
The Seven Spirits surrounding the Throne of the Eternal, at the
opening of the Grand Drama, and acting so important a part
throughout, everywhere the first instruments of the Divine Will
and Vengeance, are the Seven Amshaspands of Parsism ; as the
Twenty-four Ancients, offering to the Supreme Being the first
supplications and the first homage, remind us of the Mysterious
Chiefs of Judaism, foreshadow the Eons of Gnosticism, and repro-
duce the twenty-four Good Spirits created by Ormuzd and in-
closed in an egg.

The Christ of the Apocalypse, First-born of Creation and of the
Resurrection, is invested with the characteristics of the Ormuzd
and Sosiosch of the Zend-Avesta, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah
and the Carpistes [KapTrtor^?] of the Gnostics. The idea that the
true Initiates and Faithful become Kings and Priests, is at once
Persian, Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic. • And the definition of
the Supreme Being, that He is at once Alpha and Omega, the be-
ginning and the end — He that was, and is, and is to come,
i. e., Time illimitable, is Zoroaster's definition of Zerouane-Ak-
herene.

The depths of Satan which no man can measure ; his triumph
for a time by fraud and violence ; his being chained by an angel ;
his reprobation and his precipitation into a sea of metal ; his
names of the Serpent and the Dragon ; the whole conflict of the
* Good Spirits or celestial armies against the bad.; are so many
ideas and designations found alike in the Zend-Avesta, the Ka-
balah, and the Gnosis.

We even find in the Apocalypse that singular Persian idea,
which regards some of the lower animals as so many Devs or ve-
hicles of Devs.

The guardianship of the earth by a good angel, the renewing of
the earth and heavens, and the final triumph of pure and holy
men, are the same victory of Good over Evil, for which the whole
Orient looked.

The gold, and white raiments, of the twenty-four Elders are, as
in- the Persian faith, the signs of a lofty perfection and divine
purity.

Thus the Human mind labored and struggled and tortured itself
for ages, to explain to itself what it felt, without confessing it, to
be inexplicable. A vast crowd of indistinct abstractions, hovering

274 MORAL^ AND DOGMA.

in the imagination, a train of words embodying no tangible mean-
ing, an inextricable labyrinth of subtleties, was the result.

But one grand idea ever emerged and stood prominent and un-
changeable over the weltering chaos of confusion. God is great,
and good, and wise. Evil and pain and sorrow are temporary,
and for wise and beneficent purposes. They must be consistent
with God's goodness, purity, and infinite perfection ; and there
must be a mode of explaining them, if we could but find it out;
as, in all ways we will endeavor to do. Ultimately, Good will pre-
vail, and Evil be overthrown. -God alone can do this, and He will
do it, by an Emanation from Himself, assuming the Human form
and redeeming the world.

Behold the object, the end, the result, of the great speculations
and logomachies of antiquity; the ultimate annihilation of evil,
and restoration of Man to his first estate, by a Redeemer, a Ma-
sayah, a Christos, the incarnate Word, Reason, or Power of Deity.

This Redeemer is the Word or Logos, the Ormuzd of Zoroaster,
the Ainsoph of the Kabalah, the .Nous of Platonism and Philon-
ism ; He that was in the Begirming with God, and was God, and
by Whom everything was made. That He was looked for by all
the People of the East is abundantly shown by the Gospel of John
and the Letters of Paul ; wherein scarcely anything seemed neces-
sary to be said in proof that such a Redeemer was to come ; but
all the energies of the writers are devoted to showing that Jesus
was that Christos whom all the nations were expecting ; the
"Word," the Masayah, the Anointed or Consecrated One.

In this Degree the great contest between good and evil, in antici-
pation of the appearance and advent of the Word or Redeemer is
symbolized ; and the mysterious esoteric teachings of the Essenes
and the Cabalists. Of the practices of the former we gain but
glimpses in the ancient writers; but we know that, as their doc-
trines were taught by John the Baptist, they greatly resembled
those of greater purity and more nearly perfect, taught by Jesus ;
and that not only Palestine was full of John's disciples, so that the
Priests and Pharisees did not dare to deny John's inspiration ; but
his doctrine had extended to Asia Minor, and -had made converts
in luxurious Ephesus, as it also had in Alexandria in Egypt ; and
that they readily embraced the Christian faith, o.f which they had
before not even heard.

These old controversies have died away, and the old faiths have

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST. 2J5

faded into oblivion. But Masonry still survives, vigorous and
strong, as when philosophy was taught in the schools of Alexan-
dria and under the Portico; teaching the same old truths as the
Essenes taught by the shores of the Red Sea, and as John the
Baptist preached in the Desert: truths imperishable as the Deity,
and undeniable as Light. Those truths were gathered by the
Essenes from the doctrines of the Orient and the Occident, from
the Zend-Avesta and the Vedas, from Plato and Pythagoras, from
India, Persia. Phoenicia, and Syria, from Greece and Egypt, and
from the Holy Books of the Jews. Hence we are called Knights
of the East and West, because their doctrines came from both.
And these doctrines, the wheat sifted from the chaff, the Truth
separated from Error, Masonry has garnered up in her heart of
hearts, and through the fires of persecution, and the storms of
calamity, has brought them and delivered them unto us. That
God is One, immutable, unchangeable, infinitely just and good ;
that Light will finally overcome Darkness, — Good conquer Evil,
and Truth be victor over Error; — these, rejecting all the wild and
useless speculations of the Zend-Avesta, theKabalah, the Gnostics,
and the Schools, are the religion and Philosophy of Masonry.

Those speculations and fancies it is useful to study ; that know-
ing in what worthless and unfruitful investigations the mind may
engage, you may the more value and appreciate the plain, simple,
sublime, universally-acknowledged truths, which have in all ages
been the Light by which Masons have been guided on their way ;
the Wisdom and Strength that like imperishable columns have
sustained and will continue to sustain its glorious and magnificent
Temple.

XVI1L
KNIGHT ROSE CROIX.

[Prince Rose Croix.]

EACH of us makes such applications to his own faith and creed,
of the symbols and ceremonies of this Degree, as seems to him
proper. With these special interpretations we have here nothing
to do. Like the legend of the Master Khurum, in which some
see figured the condemnation and sufferings of Christ ; others
those of the unfortunate Grand Master of the Templars ; others
those of the first Charles, King of England; and others still the
annual descent of the Sun at the winter Solstice to the regions of
darkness, the basis of many an ancient legend ; so the ceremonies
of this Degree receive different explanations ; each interpreting
them for himself, and being offended at the interpretation of no
other.

In no other way could Masonry possess its character of Univer-
sality ; that character which has ever been peculiar to it from its
origin ; and which enables two Kings, worshippers of different
Deities, to sit together as Masters, while the walls of the first tem-
ple arose ; and the men of Gebal, bowing down to the Phoenician
Gods, to work by the side of the Hebrews to whom those Gods
were abomination; and to sit with them in trie same Lodge as
brethren.
276

KNIGHT ROSE CROlX. 2J7

You have already learned that these ceremonies have one gen-
eral significance, to every one, of every faith, who believes in God,
and the soul's immortality.

The primitive men met in no Temples made with human hands.
"God," said Stephen, the first Martyr, "dwelleth not in Temples
made with hands." In the open air, under the overarching mys-
terious sky, in the great World-Temple, they uttered their vows
and thanksgivings, and adored the God of Light ; of that Light
that was to them the type of Good, as darkness was the type of
Evil.

All antiquity solved the enigma of the existence of Evil, by
supposing the existence of a Principle of Evil, of Demons, fallen
Angels, an Ahriman, a Typhon, a Siva, a Lok, or a Satan, that,
first falling themselves, and plunged in misery and darkness,
tempted man to his fall, and brought sin into the world. All be-
lieved in a future life, to be attained by purification and trials ; in
a state or successive states of reward and punishment ; and in a
•Mediator or Redeemer, by whom the Evil Principle was to be
overcome, and the Supreme Deity reconciled to His creatures.
The belief was general, that He was to be born of a Virgin, and
suffer a painful death. The Indians called him Chrishna : the
Chinese, Kioun-tse ; the Persians, Sosiosch ; the Chaldeans, Dhou-
vanai ; the Egyptians, Har-Oeri ; Plato, Love ; and the Scandina-
vians, Balder.

Chrishna, the Hindoo Redeemer, was cradled and educated
among Shepherds. A Tyrant, at the time of his birth, ordered
all the male children to be slain. He performed miracles, say his
legends, even raising the dead. He washed the feet of the Brah-
mins, and was meek and lowly of spirit. He was born of a Vir-
gin; descended to Hell, rose again, ascended to Heaven, charged
his disciples to teach his doctrines, and gave them the gift of mir-
acles.

The first Masonic Legislator whose memory is preserved to us
by history, was Buddha, who, about a thousand years before the
Christian era, reformed the religion of Manous. He called to the
Priesthood all men, without distinction of caste, who felt them-
selves inspired by God to instruct men. Those who so associated
themselves formed a Society of Prophets under the name of Sa-
maneans. They recognized the existence of a single uncreated
God, in whose bosom everything: grows, is developed and trans-

278 MORALS AND DOGMA.

formed. The worship of this God reposed upon the obedience of
all the beings He created. His feasts were those of the Solstices.
The doctrines of Buddha pervaded India, China, and Japan. The
Priests of Brahma, professing a dark and bloody creed, brutalized
by Superstition, united together against Buddhism, and with the
aid of Despotism, exterminated its followers. But their blood
fertilized the new doctrine, which produced a new Society under
the name of Gymnosophists ; and a large number, fleeing to
Ireland, planted their doctrines there, and there erected the round
towers, some of which still stand, solid and unshaken as at first,
visible monuments of the remotest ages.

The Phoenician Cosmogony, like all others in Asia, was the
Word of God, written in astral characters, by the planetary Divin-
ities, and communicated by the Demi-gods, as a profound mystery,
to the brighter intelligences of Humanity, to be propagated by
them among men. Their doctrines resembled the Ancient Sabe-
ism, and being the faith of Hiram the King and his namesake the
Artist, are of interest to all Masons. With them, the First Prin-
ciple was half material, half spiritual, a dark air, animated and
impregnated by the spirit ; and a disordered chaos, covered with
thick darkness. From this came the WORD, and thence creation
and generation ; and thence a race of men, children of light, who
adored Heaven and its Stars as the Supreme Being; and whose
different gods were but incarnations of the Sun, the Moon, the
Stars, and the Ether. Chrysor was the great igneous power of
Nature, and Baal and Malakarth representations of the Sun and
Moon, the latter word, in Hebrew, meaning Queen.

Man had fallen, but not by the tempting of the serpent. For,
with the Phoenicians, the serpent was deemed to partake of the
Divine Nature, and was sacred, as he was in Egypt. He was
deemed to be immortal, unless slain by violence, becoming young
again in his old age, by entering into and consuming himself.
Hence the Serpent in a circle, holding his tail in his mouth, was
an emblem of eternity. With the head of a hawk he was of a
Divine Nature, and a symbol of the sun. Hence one Sect of the
Gnostics took him for their good genius, and hence the brazen ser-
pent reared by Moses in the Desert, on which the Israelites looked
and lived. .

"Before the chaos, that preceded the birth of Heaven and
Earth," said the Chinese Lao-Tseu, "a single Being existed, im-

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 27Q

mense and silent, immutable and always acting; the mother of
the Universe. I know not the name of that Being, but I designate
it by the word Reason. Man has his model in the earth, the
earth in Heaven, Heaven in Reason, and Reason in itself."

"I am," says Isis, "Nature ; parent of all things, the sovereign
of the Elements, the primitive progeny of Time, the most exalted
of the Deities, the first of the Heavenly Gods and Goddesses, the
Queen of the Shades, the uniform countenance; who dispose
with my rod the numerous lights of Heaven, the salubrious breezes
of the sea, and the mournful silence of the dead ; whose single
Divinity the whole world venerates in many forms, with various
rites and by many names. The Egyptians, skilled in ancient lore,
worship me with proper ceremonies, and call me by my true name,
Isis the Queen."

The Hindu Vedas thus define the Deity:

"He who surpasses speech, and through whose power speech is
expressed, know thou that He is Brahma ; and not these perish-
able things that man adores.

"He whom Intelligence cannot comprehend, and He alone, say
the sages, through whose Power the nature of Intelligence can be
understood, know thou that He is .Brahma ; and not these perish-
able things that man adores.

"He who cannot be seen by the organ of sight, and through
whose power the organ of seeing sees, know thou that He is
Brahma ; and not these perishable things that man adores.

"He who cannot be heard by the organ of hearing, and through
whose power the organ of hearing hears, know thou that He is
Brahma ; and not these perishable things that man adores.

"He who cannot be perceived by the organ of smelling, and
through whose power the organ of smelling smells, know thou that
He is Brahma ; and not these perishable things that man adores."

"When God resolved to create the human race," said Arius,
"He made a Being that He called The WORD, The Son, Wisdom,
to the end that this Being might give existence to men." This
WORD is the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah,
the Nous of Plato and Philo, the Wisdom or Demionrgos of the
Gnostics.

That is the True Word, the knowledge of which our ancient
brethren sought as the priceless reward of their labors on the
Holy Temple: the Word of Life, the Divine Reason, "in whom
19

280 MORALS AND DOGMA.

was Life, and that Life the Light of men" ; "which long shone in
darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not ;" the Infinite
Reason that is the Soul of Nature, immortal, of which the Word
of this Degree reminds us ; and to believe wherein and revere it, is
the peculiar duty of every Mason.

"In the beginning," says the extract from some older work,
with which John commences his Gospel, "was the Word, and the
Word was near to God, and the Word was God. All things were
made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was
made. In Him was Life, and the life was the Light of man ; and
the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not contain it."

It is an old tradition that this passage was from an older work.
And Philostorgius and Nieephorus state, that when the Emperor
Julian undertook to rebuild the Temple, a stone was taken up,
that covered the mouth of a deep square cave, into which one of
the laborers, being let down by a rope, found in the centre of
the floor a cubical pillar, on which lay a roll or book, wrapped in
a fine linen cloth, in which, in capital letters, was the foregoing
passage.

However this may have been, it is plain that John's Gospel is a
polemic against the Gnostics ; and, stating at the outset the current
doctrine in regard to the creation by the Word, he then addresses
himself to show and urge that this Word was Jesus Christ.

And the first sentence, fully rendered into our language, would
read thus : "When the process of emanation, of creation or evolu-
tion of existences inferior to the Supreme God began, the Word
came into existence and was : and this word was [rpos rov &eov]
near to God ; /. e. the immediate or first emanation from God : and
it was God Himself, developed or manifested in that particular
mode, and in action. And by that Word everything that is was
created." — And thus Tertullian says that God made the World out
of nothing, by means of His Word, Wisdom, or Power.

To Philo the Jew, as to the Gnostics, the Supreme Being was
the Primitive Light, or Archetype of Light, — Source whence the
rays emanate that illuminate Souls. He is the Soul of the World,
and as such acts everywhere. He himself fills and bounds his
whole existence, and his forces fill and penetrate everything. His
linage is the WORD [Logos], a form more brilliant than fire, which
is not pure light. This WORD dwells in God ; for it is within His
Intelligence that the Supreme Being frame? for Himself the

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 28\

Types of Ideas of all that is to assume reality in the Universe.
The WORD is the Vehicle by which God acts on the Universe ; the
World of Ideas by means whereof God has created visible things ;
the more Ancient God. as compared with the Material World ;
Chief and General Representative of all Intelligences ; the Arch-
angel, type and representative of all spirits, even those of Mortals ;
the type of Man ; the primitive man himself. These ideas are
borrowed from Plato. And this WORD is not only .the Creator ["by
Him was everything made that was made"],but acts in the place of
God ; and through him act all the Powers and Attributes of God.
And also, as first representative of the human race, he is the pro-
tector of Men and their Shepherd, the "Ben H'Adam," or Son of
Man.

The actual condition of Man is not his primitive condition, that
in which he was the image of the Word. His unruly passions
have caused him to fall from his original lofty estate. But he may
rise again, by following the teachings of Heavenly Wisdom, and
the Angels whom God commissions to aid him in escaping from
the entanglements of the body ; and by fighting bravely against
Evil, the existence of which God has allowed solely to furnish him
with the means of exercising his free will.

The Supreme Being of the Egyptians was Amun, a secret and
concealed God, the Unknown Father of the Gnostics, the Source
of Divine Life, and of all force, the Plenitude of all, comprehend-
ing all things in Himself, the original Light. He creates nothing ;
but everything emanates from Him : and all other Gods are but
his manifestations. FVom Him, by the utterance of a Word, ema-
nated Neith, the Divine Mother of all things, the Primitive
THOUGHT, the FORCE that puts everything in movement, the
SPIRIT everywhere extended, the Deity of Light and Mother of the
Sun.

Of this Supreme Being, Osiris was the image, Source of all
Good in the moral and physical world, and constant foe of Typhon,
the Genius of Evil, the Satan of Gnosticism, brute matter, deemed
to be always at feud with the spirit that flowed from the Deity;
and over whom Har-Oeri, the Redeemer, Son of Isis and Osiris,
is finally to prevail.

In the Zend-Avesta of the Persians the Supreme Being is
Time irithout limit, ZERUANE AKHERENE. — No origin could be
r-?si^ned to Him ; for He was enveloped in His own Glory, and

282 MORALS AND DOGMA.

His Nature and Attributes were so inaccessible to human Intelli-
gence, that He was but the object of a silent veneration. The com-
mencement of Creation was by emanation from Him. The first
emanation was the Primitive Light, and from this Light emerged
Ormuzd, the King of Light, who, by the WORD, created the World
in its purity, is its Preserver and Judge, a Holy and Sacred Be-
ing, Intelligence and Knowledge, Himself Time without limit,
and wielding all the powers of the Supreme Being.

In this Persian faith, as taught many centuries before our era,
and embodied in the Zend-Avesta, there was in man a pure Prin-
ciple, proceeding from the Supreme Being, produced by the Will
and Word of Ormuzd. To that was united an impure principle,
proceeding from a foreign influence, that of Ahriman, the Dragon,
or principle of Evil. Tempted by Ahriman, the first man and wo-
man had fallen ; and for twelve thousand years there was to be
war between Ormuzd and the Good Spirits created by him, and
Ahriman and the Evil ones whom he had called into existence.

But pure souls are assisted by the Good Spirits, the Triumph of
the Good Principle is determined upon in the decrees of the Su-
preme Being, and the period of that triumph will infallibly arrive.
At the moment when the earth shall be most afflicted with the
evils brought upon it by the Spirits of perdition, three Prophets
will appear to bring assistance to mortals. Sosiosch, Chief of the
Three, will regenerate the world, and restore to it its primitive
Beauty, Strength, and Purity. He will judge the good and the
wicked. After the universal resurrection of the Good, the pure
Spirits will conduct them to an abode of eternal happiness. Ahri-
man, his evil Demons, and all the world, will be purified in a tor-
rent of liquid burning metal. The Law of Ormuzd will rule
everywhere : all men will be happy : all, enjoying an unalterable
bliss, will unite with Sosiosch in singing the praises of the Su-
pieme Being.

These doctrines, with some modifications, were adopted by the
Kabalists and afterward by the Gnostics.

Apollonius of Tyana says : "We shall render the most appropri-
ate worship to the Deity, when to that God" whom we call the
First, who is One, and separate from all, and after whom we recog-
nize the others, we present no offerings whatever, kindle to Him
no fire, dedicate to Him no sensible thing; for he needs nothing,
even of all that natures more exalted than ours could give. The

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 283

earth produces no plant, the air nourishes no animal, there is in
short nothing, which would not be impure in his sight. In address-
ing ourselves to Him, we must use only the higher word, that, I
mean, which is not expressed by the mouth, — the silent inner word

of the spirit From the most Glorious of all Beings, we must

seek for blessings, by that which is most glorious in ourselves ; and
that is the spirit, which needs no organ."

Strabo says : "This one Supreme Essence is that which embraces
us all, the water and the land, that which we call the Heavens,
the \Yorld, the Nature of things. This Highest Being should be
worshipped, without any visible image, in sacred groves. In such
retreats the devout should lay themselves down to sleep, and
expect signs from God in .dreams."

Aristotle says : "It has been handed down in a mythical form,
from the earliest times to posterity, that there are Gods, and that
The Divine compasses entire nature. All besides this has been
added, after the mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the
multitude, and for the interest of the laws and the advantage of
the State. Thus men have given to the Gods human forms, and
have even represented them under the figure of other beings, in
the train of which fictions followed many more of the same sort.
But if, from all this, we separate the original principle, and con-
sider it alone, namely, that the first Essences are Gods, we shall
find that this has been divinely said ; and since it is probable that
philosophy and the arts have been several times, so far as that is
possible, found and lost, such doctrines may have been preserved
to our times as the remains of ancient wisdom."

Porphyry says : ''By images addressed to sense, the ancients
represented God and his powers — by the visible they typified the
invisible for those who had learned to read, in these types, as in
a book, a treatise on the Gods. \Ye need not wonder if the ignorant
consider the images to be nothing more than wood or stone; for
just so. they who are ignorant of writing see nothing in monu-
ments but stone, nothing in tablets but wood, and in books but a
tissue of papyrus."

Apollonius of Tyana held, that birth and death are only in ap-
pearance ; that which separates itself from the one substance (the
one Divine essence), and is caught up by matter, seems to be born ;
that, again, which releases itself from the bonds of matter, and is
reunited with the one Divine Essence, seems to die. There is, at

284 MORALS AND DOGMA.

most, an alteration between becoming visible and becoming in-
visfble. In all there is, properly speaking, but the one essence,
which alone acts and suffers, by becoming all things to all; the
Eternal God, whom men wrong, when they deprive Him of what
properly can be attributed to Him only, and transfer it to other
names and persons.

The New Platonists substituted the idea of the Absolute, for
the Supreme Essence itself ; — as the first, simplest principle, ante-
rior to all existence ; of which nothing determinate can be predi-
cated ; to which no consciousness, no self-contemplation can be
ascribed ; inasmuch as to do so, would immediately imply a qual-
ity, a distinction of subject and object. This Supreme Entity can
be known only by an intellectual intuition of the Spirit, trans-
scending itself, and emancipating itself from its own limits.

This mere logical tendency, by means of which men thought to
arrive at the conception of such an absolute, the o'v, was united
with a certain mysticism, which, by a transcendent state of feel-
ing, communicated, as it were, to this abstraction what the mind
would receive as a reality. The absorption of the Spirit into that
superexistence (rd ixixetva r^c ofow'oc), so as to be entirely
identified with it, or such a revelation of the latter to the spirit
raised above itself, was regarded as the highest end which the spir-
itual life could reach.

The New Platonists' idea of God, was that of One Simple Origi-
nal Essence, exalted above all plurality and all becoming; the
only true Being; unchangeable, eternal [£?c &v &vi TtfJ wv rb
dee Ttsirhjpcaxe xac fj.6vov I<TTC TO XCLTU TOUTOV ovrwc «^]:
from whom all Existence in its several gradations has emanated —
the world of Gods, as nearest akin to Himself, being first, and at
the head of all. In these Gods, that perfection, which in the
Supreme Essence was inclosed and unevolved, is expanded and
becomes knowable. They serve to exhibit in different forms the
image of that Supreme Essence, to which no soul can rise, except
by the loftiest flight of contemplation ; and after it has rid itself
from all that pertains to sense — from all manifoldness. They are
the mediators between man (amazed and -stupefied by manifold-
ness) and the Supreme Unity.

Philo says : "He who disbelieves the miraculous, simply as the
miraculous, neither knows God, nor has he ever sought after Him ;
for otherwise he would have understood, by looking at that truly

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 285

great and awe-inspiring sight, the miracle of the Universe, that these
miracles (in God's providential guidance o£ His people) are but
child's play for the Divine Power. But the truly miraculous has
become despised through familiarity. The universal, on the con-
trary, although in itself insignificant, yet, through our love of
novelty, transports us with amazement."

In opposition to the anthropopathism of the Jewish Scriptures,
the Alexandrian Jews endeavored to purify the idea of God from
all admixture of the Human. By the exclusion of every human
passion, it was sublimated to a something devoid of all attributes,
and wholly transcendental ; and the mere Being [oi>]} the Good,
in and by itself, the Absolute of Platonism, was substituted for
the personal Deity [ml"!"1] of the Old Testament. By soaring up-
ward, beyond all created existence, the mind, disengaging itself
from the Sensible, attains to the intellectual intuition of this Ab-
solute Being; of whom, however, it can predicate nothing but
existence, and sets aside all other determinations as not answering
to the exalted nature of the Supreme Essence.

Thus Philo makes a distinction between those who are in the
proper sense Sons of God, having by means of contemplation
raised themselves to the highest Being, or attained to a knowledge
of Him, in His immediate self-manifestation, and those who know
God only in his- mediate revelation through his operation — such as
He declares Himself in creation — in the revelation still veiled in
the letter of Scripture — those, in short, who attach themselves
simply to the Logos, and consider this to be the Supreme God;
who are the sons of the Logos, rather than of the True Being, (ov).

"God," says Pythagoras, "is neither the object of sense, nor
subject to passion, but invisible, only intelligible, and supremely
intelligent. In His body He is like the light, and in His soul He re-
sembles truth. He is the universal spirit that pervades and dif-
fuseth itself over all nature. All beings receive their life from
Him. There is but one only God. who is not, as some are apt to
imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the Universe ;
but being Himself all in all, He sees all the beings that fill His
immensity; the only Principle, the Light of Heaven, the Father
of all. He produces everything; He orders and disposes every-
thing ; He is the REASON, the LIFE, and the MOTION of all being."

"I am the LIGHT of the world ; he that followeth Me shall not
walk in DARKNESS, but shall have the LIGHT OF LIFE." So said

286 MORALS AND DOGMA.

the Founder of the Christian Religion, as His words are reported
by John the Apostle.

God, say the sacred writings of the Jews, appeared to Moses in
a FLAME OF FIRE, in the midst of a bush, which was not consumed.
He descended upon Mount Sinai, as the smoke of a furnace; He
went before the children of Israel, by day, in a pillar of cloud, and,
by night, in a pillar of fire, to give them light. ''Call you on the
name of your Gods," said Elijah the Prophet to the Priests of
Baal, "and I will call upon the name of ADONAI; and the God
that answereth by fire, let him be God."

According to the Kabalah, as according to the doctrines of
Zoroaster, everything that exists has emanated from a source of
infinite light. Before all things, existed the Primitive Being, THE
ANCIEXT OF DAYS, the Ancient King of Light; a title the more
remarkable, because it is frequently given to the Creator in the
Zend-Avesta, and in the Code of the Sabeans, and occurs in the
Jewish Scriptures.

The world was His Revelation, God revealed; and subsisted
only in Him. His attributes were there reproduced with various
modifications and in different degrees; so that the Universe was
His Holy Splendor, His Mantle. He was to be adored in silence ;
and perfection consisted in a nearer approach to Him.

Before the creation of worlds, the PRIMITIVE LIGHT filled all
space, so that there was no void. When the Supreme Being, ex-
isting in this Light, resolved to display His perfections, or mani-
fest them in worlds, He withdrew within Himself, formed around
Him avoid space, and shot forth His first emanation, a ray of light ;
the cause and principle of everything that exists, uniting both the
generative and conceptive power, which penetrates everything,
and without which nothing could subsist for an instant.

Man fell, seduced by the Evil Spirits most remote from the
Great King of Light ; those of the fourth world of spirits, Asiah,
whose chief was Belial. They wage incessant war against the
pure Intelligences of the other worlds, who, like the Amshaspands,
Izeds, and Ferouers of the Persians are the tutelary guardians of
man. In the beginning, all was unison and harmony ; full of the
same divine light and perfect purity. The Seven Kings of Evil
fell, and the Universe was troubled. Then the Creator took from
the Seven Kings the principles of Good and o'f Light, and divided
them among the four worlds of Spirits, giving to the first three

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 287

the Pure Intelligences, united in love and harmony, while to the
fourth were vouchsafed only some feeble glimmerings of light.

When the strife between these and the good angels shall have
continued the appointed time, and these Spirits enveloped in dark-
ness shall long and in vain have endeavored to absorb the Divine
light and life, then will the Eternal Himself come to correct them.
He will deliver them from the gross envelopes of matter that hold
them captive, will re-animate and strengthen the ray of light or
spiritual nature which they have preserved, and re-establish
throughout the Universe that primitive Harmony which was its
bliss.

Marcion, the Gnostic, said, "The Soul of the True Christian,
adopted as a child by the Supreme Being, to whom it has long
been a stranger, receives from Him the Spirit and Divine Life. It
is led and confirmed, by this gift, in a pure and holy life, like that of
God ; and if it so completes its earthly career, in charity, chastity,
and sanctity, it will one day be disengaged from its material en-
velope, as the ripe grain is detached from the straw, and as the
young bird escapes from its shell. Like the angels, it will share
in the bliss of the Good and Perfect Father, re-clothed in an aerial
body or organ, and made like unto the Angels in Heaven."

You see, my brother, what is the meaning of Masonic "Light."
You see why the EAST of the Lodge, where the initial letter of the
Name of the Deity overhangs the Master, is the place of Light.
Light, as contradistinguished from darkness, is Good, as contradis-
tinguished from Evil : and it is that Light, the true knowledge of
Deity, the Eternal Good, for which Masons in all ages have sought.
Still Masonry marches steadily onward toward that Light that
shines in the great distance, the Light of that day when Evil,
overcome and vanquished, shall fade away and disappear forever,
and Life and Light be the one law of the Universe, and its eternal
Harmony.

The Degree of Rose ^ teaches three things ; — the unity, im-
mutability and goodness of God ; the immortality of the Soul ;
and the ultimate defeat and extinction of evil and wrong and sor-
row, by a Redeemer or Messiah, yet to come, if he has not already
appeared.

It replaces the three pillars of the old Temple, with three that
have already been explained to you, — Faith [in God, mankind, and
man's self], Hope [in the victory over evil, the advancement of

288 MORALS AND DOGMA.

I

Humanity, and a hereafter], and Charity [relieving the wants,
and tolerant of the errors and faults of others] . To be trustful, to
be hopeful, to be indulgent; these, in an age of selfishness, of ill
opinion of human nature, of harsh and bitter judgment, are the
most important Masonic Virtues, and the true supports of every
Masonic Temple. And they are the old pillars of the Temple
under different names. For he only is wise who judges others
charitably ; he only is strong who is hopeful ; and there is no
beauty like a firm faith in God, our fellows and ourself.

The second apartment, clothed in mourning, the columns of
the Temple shattered and prostrate, and the brethren bowed down
in the deepest dejection, represents the world under the tyranny of
the Principle of Evil ; where virtue is persecuted and vice reward-
ed; where the righteous starve for bread, and the wicked live sump-
tously and dress in purple and fine linen ; where insolent ignorance
rules, and learning and genius serve ; where King and Priest
trample on liberty and the rights of conscience; where freedom
hides in caves and mountains, and sycophancy and servility fawn
and thrive ; where the cry of the widow and the orphan starving
for want of food, and shiveringwith cold, rises evertoHeaven from
a million miserable hovels ; where men, willing to labor, and
starving, they and their children and the wives of their bosoms, beg
plaintively for work, when the pampered capitalist stops his mills ;
where the law punishes her who, starving, steals a loaf, and lets
the seducer go free ; where the success of a party justifies murder,
and violence and rapine go unpunished ; and where he who with
many .years' cheating and grinding the faces of the poor grows rich,
receives office and honor in life, and after death brave funeral and
a splendid mausoleum :*— this world, where, since its making, war
has never ceased, nor man paused in the sad task of torturing and
murdering his brother; and of which ambition, avarice, envy,
hatred, lust, and tlie rest of Ahriman's and Typhon's army make
a Pandemonium : this world, sunk in sin, reeking with baseness,
clamorous with sorrow and misery. If any see in it also a type of
the sorrow of the Craft for the death of Hiram, the grief of the
Jews at the fall of Jerusalem, the misery of the Templars at the
ruin of their order and the death of DeMolay, or the world's agony
and pangs of woe at the death of the Redeemer, it is the right of
each to do so.

The third apartment represents the consequences of sin and

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 289

vice, and the hell made of the human heart, by its fiery passions.
If any see in it also a type of the Hades of the Greeks, the Gehenna
of the Hebrews, the Tartarus of the Romans, or the Hell of the
Christians, or only of the agonies of remorse and the tortures of
an upbraiding conscience, it is the right of each to do so.

The fourth apartment represents the Universe, freed from the
insolent dominion and tyranny of the Principle of Evil, and bril-
liant with the true Light that flows from the -Supreme Deity;
when sin and wrong, and pain and sorrow, remorse and misery
shall be no more forever ; when the great plans of Infinite Eternal
Wisdom shall be fully developed ; and all God's creatures, seeing
that all apparent evil and individual suffering and wrong were
but the drops that went to swell the great river of infinite good-
ness, shall know that vast as is the power of Deity, His goodness
and beneficence are infinite as His power. If any" see in it a type
of the peculiar mysteries of any faith or creed, or an allusion to any
past occurrence, it is their right to do so. Let each apply its sym-
bols as he pleases. To all of us they typify the universal rule of
Masonry, — of its three chief virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity;
of brotherly love and universal benevolence. We labor here to
no other end. These symbols need no other interpretation.

The obligations of our Ancient Brethren of the Rose >J< were to
fulfill all the duties of friendship, cheerfulness, charity, peace, lib-
erality, temperance and chastity : and scrupulously to avoid im-
purity, haughtiness, hatred, anger, and every other kind of vice.
They took their philosophy from the old Theology of the Egyp-
tians, as Moses and Solomon had done, and borrowed its hiero-
glyphics and the ciphers of the Hebrews. Their principal rules
were, to exercise the profession of medicine charitably and without
fee, to advance the cause of virtue, enlarge the sciences, and induce
men to live as in the primitive times of the world.

When this Degree had its origin, it is not important to inquire ;
nor with what different rites it has been practised in different
countries and at various times. It is of very high antiquity. Its
ceremonies differ with the degrees of latitude and longitude, and
it receives variant interpretations. If we were to examine all the
different ceremonials, their emblems, and their formulas, we should
see that all that belongs to the primitive and essential elements
of the order, is respected in every sanctuary. All alike practise
virtue, that it may produce fruit. All labor, like us, for the ex-

290 MORALS AND DOGMA.

tirpation of vice, the purification of man, the development of the
arts and sciences, and the relief of humanity.

None admit an adept to their lofty philosophical knowledge, and
mysterious sciences, until he has been purified at the altar of the
symbolic Degrees. Of what importance are differences of opinion
as to the age and genealogy of the Degree, or variance in the prac-
tice, ceremonial and liturgy, or the shade of color of the banner
under which each tribe of Israel marched, if all revere the Holy
Arch of the symbolic Degrees, first and unalterable source of Free-
Masonry ; if all revere our conservative principles, and are with us
in the great purposes of our organization ?

If, anywhere, brethren of a particular religious belief have been
excluded from this Degree, it merely shows how gravely the pur-
poses and plan of Masonry may be misunderstood. For whenever
the door of any Degree is closed against him who believes in one
God and the soul's immortality, on account of the other tenets of
his faith, that Degree is Masonry no longer. No Mason has the
right to interpret the symbols of this Degree for another, or to re-
fuse him its mysteries, if he will not take them with the explana-
tion and commentary superadded.

Listen, my brother, to our explanation of the symbols of the De-
gree, and then give them such further interpretation as you think
fit.

The Cross has been a sacred symbol from the earliest Antiquity.
It is found upon all the enduring monuments of the world, in
Egypt, in Assyria, in Hindostan, in Persia, and on the Buddhist
towers of Ireland. Buddha was said to have died upon it. The
Druids cut an oak into its shape and held it sacred, and built their
temples in that form. Pointing to the four quarters of the world,
it was the symbol of universal nature. It was on a cruciform tree,
that Chrishna was said to have expired, pierced with arrows. It
was revered in Mexico.

But its peculiar meaning in this Degree, is that given to it by
the Ancient Egyptians. Thoth or Phtha is represented on the old-
est monuments carrying in his hand the Crux Ansata, or Ankh.
[a Tau cross, with a ring or circle over it]-.. He is so seen on the
double tablet of Shufu and Noh Shufu, builders of the greatest of
the Pyramids, at Wady Meghara, in the peninsula of Sinai. It was
the hieroglyphic for life, and with a triangle prefixed meant life-
giving. To us therefore it is the symbol of Life — of that life

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 2QI

that emanated from the Deity, and of that Eternal Life for which
we all hope ; through our faith in God's infinite goodness.

The ROSE was anciently sacred to Aurora and the Sun. It is
a symbol of Dawn, of the resurrection of Light and the renewal
of life, and therefore of the dawn of the first day, and more par-
ticularly of the resurrection : and the Cross and Rose together
are therefore hieroglyphically to be read, the Daivn of Eternal
Life which all Nations have hoped for by the advent of a Re-
deemer.

The Pelican feeding her young is an emblem of the large and
bountiful beneficence of Nature, of the Redeemer of fallen man,
and of that humanity and charity that ought to distinguish a
Knight of this Degree.

The Eagle was the living Symbol of the Egyptian God Mendes
or Menthra, whom Sesostris-Ramses made .one with Amun-Re,
the God of Thebes and Upper Egypt, and the representative of the
Sun, the word RE meaning Sun or King.

The Compass surmounted with a cro-vun signifies that notwith-
standing the high rank attained in Masonry by a Knight of the
Rose Croix, equity and impartiality are invariably to govern his
conduct.

To the wordJhfRi^jnscribed on the Crux Ansata over the
Master's Seat, many meanings have been assigned. The Christian
Initiate reverentially sees in it the initials of the inscription upon
the cross on which Christ suffered — lestts Nazarenus Rex ludte-
orum. The sages of Antiquity connected it with one of the great-
est secrets of Nature, that of universal regeneration. They inter-
preted it thus, Igne Natura renovatur Integra; [entire nature is
renovated by fire] : The Alchemical or Hermetic Masons framed
for it this aphorism, Igne nitruni roris invenitur. And the Jes-
uits are charged with having'applied to it this odious axiom,} ustu in
necare reges impios. The four letters are the initials of the Hebrew
words that represent the four elements — Iamtnim,the seas or water;
Nonr, fire ; Rouach, the air, and lebeschah, the dry earth. How
we read it, I need not repeat to you.

The CROSS, )(> was the Sign of the Creative Wisdom or Logos,
the Son of God. Plato says, "He expressed him upon the Uni-
verse in the figure of the letter X. The next Power to the Su-
preme God was decussated or figured in the shape of a Cross on
the Universe." Mithras signed his soldiers on the forehead with a

2Q2 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Cross. )( is the mark of 600, the mysterious cycle of the Incar-
nations. ~T-y

We constantly see the Tau and the Resh united thus -f- . These
two letters, in the old Samaritan, as found in Arius, stand, the
first for 400, the second for 200=600. This is the Staff of Osiris,
also, and his monogram, and was adopted by the Christians as a
Sign. On a medal *p of Constantius is this inscription, "In hoc
signo ^nctor cris 7^ ." An inscription in the Duomo at Milan
reads, "^. • <?/ p. Christi • Nomina • Sancta • Tcne'i."

The Egyptians used as a Sign of their God Canobus, a "|" or a
^ indifferently. The Vaishnavas of India have also the same
Sacred Tau, which they also mark with Crosses, thus ^ and with
triangles, thus, VV , The vestments of the priests of Horus were
covered with these Crosses >Ji. So was the dress of the Lama of
Thibet. The Sectarian marks of the Jains are r-^-1.^ The distinc-
tive badge of the Sect of Xac Japonicus is JJ^LJ- ^ '1S tne Sig11
of Fo, identical with the Cross of Christ. ^ *~*

On the ruins of Mandore, in India, among other mystic yfc«
emblems, are the mystic triangle, and the interlaced triangle, Ar^ •
This is also found on ancient coins and medals, excavated from the
ruins of Oojein and other ancient cities of India.

You entered here amid gloom and into shadow, and are clad in
the apparel of sorrow. Lament, with us, the sad condition of the
Human race, in this vale of tears ! the calamities of men and the
agonies of nations ! the darkness of the bewildered soul, oppressed
by doubt and apprehension !

There is no human soul that is not sad at times. There is no
thoughtful soul that does not at times despair. There is perhaps
none, of all that think at all of anything beyond the needs and in-
terests of the body, that is not at times startled and terrified, by the
awful questions which, feeling as though it were a guilty thing for
doing so, it whispers to itself in its inmost depths. Some Demon
seems to torture it with doubts, and to crush it with despair, ask-
ing whether, after all, it is certain that -its convictions are true,
and its faith well founded : whether it is indeed sure that a God of
Infinite Love and Beneficence rules the Universe, or only some great
remorseless Fate and iron Necessity, hid in impenetrable gloom,
And to which men and their sufferings and sorrows^ their hopes and
joys, their ambitions and deeds, are of no more interest or im-
portance than the motes that dance in the sunshine ; or a Being

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 293

that amuses Himself with the incredible vanity and folly, the wri-
things and contortions of the insignificant insects that compose
Humanity, and idly imagine that they resemble the Omnipotent.
"What are we," the Tempter asks, "but puppets in a show -box?
O Omnipotent destiny, pull our strings gently ! Dance us merci-
fully off our miserable little stage !"

"Is it not," the Demon whispers, "merely the inordinate vanity of
man that causes him now to pretend to himself that he is like unto
God in intellect, sympathies and passions, as it was that which, at
the beginning, made him believe that he was, in his bodily shape
and organs, the very image of the Deity ? Is not his God merely
his own shadow, projected in gigantic outlines upon the clouds?
Does he not create for himself a God out of himself, by merely
adding indefinite extension to his own faculties, powers, and
passions ?"

"Who," the Voice that will not be always silent whispers, "has
ever thoroughly satisfied himself with his own arguments in re-
spect to his own nature ? Who ever demonstrated to himself, with
a conclusiveness that elevated the belief to certainty, that he was an
immortal spirit, dwelling only temporarily in the house and envel-
ope of the body, and to live on forever after that shall have decay-
ed? W7ho ever has demonstrated or ever can demonstrate that the
intellect of Man differs from that of the wiser animals, otherwise
than in degree ? Who has ever done more than to utter nonsense
and incoherencies in regard to the difference between the instincts
of the dog and the reason of Man? The horse, the dog, the ele-
phant, are as conscious of their identity as we are. They think,
dream, remember, argue with themselves, devise, plan, and reason.
What is the intellect and intelligence of the man but the intel-
lect of the animal in a higher degree or larger quantity ?" In the
real explanation of a single thought of a dog, all metaphysics will
be condensed.

And with still more terrible significance, the Voice asks, in what
respect the masses of men, the vast swarms of the human race,
have proven themselves either wiser or better than the animals in
whose eyes a higher intelligence shines than in their dull, unintel-
lectual orbs ; in what respect they have proven themselves wor-
thy of or suited for an immortal life. Would that be a prize of any
value to the vast majority? Do they show, here upon earth, any
capacity to improve, any fitness for a state of existence in which

294 MORALS AND DOGMA.

they could not crouch to power, like hounds dreading the lash, or
tyrannize over defenceless weakness ; in which they could not hate,
and persecute, and torture, and exterminate ; in which they could
not trade, and speculate, and over-reach, and entrap the unwary and
cheat the confiding, and gamble and thrive, and sniff with self-
righteousness at the short-comings of others, and thank God that
they were not like other men? What, to immense numbers of
men, would be the value of a Heaven where they could not lie and
libel, and ply base avocations for profitable returns?

Sadly we look around us, and read the gloomy and dreary rec-
ords of the old dead and rotten ages. More than eighteen centuries
have staggered away into the spectral realm of the Past, since
Christ, teaching the Religion of Love, was crucified, that it might
become a Religion of Hate ; and His Doctrines are not yet even
nominally accepted as true by a fourth of mankind. Since His
death, what incalculable swarms of human beings have lived and
died in total unbelief of all that we deem essential to Salvation !
What multitudinous myriads of souls, since the darkness of idola-
trous superstition settled down, thick and impenetrable, upon the
earth, have flocked up toward the eternal Throne of God, to
receive His judgment?

The Religion of Love proved to be, for seventeen long cen-
turies, as much the Religion of Hate, and infinitely more the Re-
ligion of Persecution, than Mahometanism, its unconquerable rival.
Heresies grew up before the Apostles died; and God hated the
Nicolaltans, while John, at Patmos, proclaimed His coming
wrath. Sects wrangled, and each, as it gained the power, persecuted
the other, until the soil of the whole Christian world was watered
with the blood, and fattened on the flesh, and whitened with the
bones, of martyrs, and human ingenuity was taxed to its utmost
to invent new modes by which tortures and agonies could be pro-
longed and made more exquisite.

"By what right," whispers the Voice, "does this savage, merciless,
persecuting animal, to which the sufferings and writhings of others
of its wretched kind furnish the most pleasurable sensations, and
the mass of which care only to eat, sleep, be clothed, and wallow in
sensual pleasures, and the best of which wrangle, hate, envy, and,
with few exceptions, regard their own interests alone, — with what
right does it endeavor to delude itself into the conviction that it is
not an animal, as the wolf, the hyena, and the tiger are, but a

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 295

somewhat nobler, a spirit destined to be immortal, a spark of the
essential Light, Fire and Reason, which are God? What other
immortality than one of selfishness could this creature enjoy? Of
what other is it capable? Must not immortality commence here
and is not life a part of it? How shall death change the base na-
ture of the base soul? Why have not those other animals that
only faintly imitate the wanton, savage, human cruelty and thirst
for blood, the same right as man has, to expect a resurrection and
an Eternity of existence, or a Heaven of Love?

The ivorld improves. Man ceases to persecute, — when the per-
secuted become too numerous and strong, longer to submit to it.
That source of pleasure closed, men exercise the ingenuities of
their cruelty on the animals and other livings things below them.
To deprive other creatures of the life which God gave them, and
this not only that we may eat their flesh for food, but out of .mere
savage wantonness, is the agreeable employment and amusement of
man, who prides himself on being the Lord of Creation, and a lit-
tle lower than the Angels. If he can no longer use the rack, the
gibbet, the pincers, and the stake, he can hate, and slander,
and delight in the thought that he will, hereafter, luxuriously
enjoying the sensual beatitudes of Heaven, see with pleasure the
writhing agonies of those justly damned for daring to hold opin-
ions contrary to his own, upon subjects totally beyond the compre-
hension both of them and him.

Where the armies of the despots cease to slay and ravage, the
armies of "Freedom" take their place, and, the black and white
commingled, slaughter and burn and ravish. Each age re-enacts
the crimes as well as the follies of its predecessors, and still war
licenses outrage and turns fruitful lands into deserts, and God is
thanked in the Churches for bloody butcheries, and the remorse-
less devastators, even when swollen by plunder, are crowned with
laurels and receive ovations.

Of the whole of mankind, not one in ten thousand has any aspi-
rations beyond the daily needs of the gross animal life. In thic
age and in all others, all men except a few, in most countries, are
born to be mere beasts of burden, co-laborers with the horse and
the ox. Profoundly ignorant, even in "civilized" lands, they think
and reason like the animals by the side of which they toil. For
them, God, Soul, Spirit, Immortality, are mere words, without any
real meaning. The God of nineteen-twentieths of the Christian

20

296 MORALS AND DOGMA.

world is only Bel, Moloch, Zeus, or at best Osiris, Mithras, or
Adonai, under another name, worshipped with the old Pagan cere-
monies and ritualistic formulas. It is the Statue of Olympian Jove,
worshipped as the Father, in the Christian Church that was a
Pagan Temple ; it is the Statue of Venus, become the Virgin Mary.
For the most part, men do not in their hearts believe that God is
either just or merciful. They fear and shrink from His lightnings
and dread His wrath. For the most part, they only think they
believe that there is another life, a judgment, and a punishment
for sin. Yet they will none the less persecute as Infidels and Athe-
ists those who do not believe what they themselves imagine they
believe, and which yet they do not believe, because it is incompre-
hensible to them in their ignorance and want of intellect. To the
vast majority of mankind, God is but the reflected image, in infi-
nite space, of the earthly Tyrant on his Throne, only more power-
ful, more inscrutable, and more implacable. To curse Humanity,
the Despot need only be, what the popular mind has, in every age,
imagined God.

In the great cities, the lower strata of the populace are equally
without faith and without hope. The others have, for the most
part, a mere blind faith, imposed by education and circumstances,
and not as productive of moral excellence or even common honesty
as Mohammedanism. "Your property will be safe here," said the
Moslem ; "There are no Christians here." The philosophical
and scientific world becomes daily more and more unbelieving.
Faith and Reason are not opposites, in equilibrium; but antago-
nistic and hostile to each other ; the result being the darkness and
despair of scepticism, avowed, or half-veiled as rationalism.

Over more than three-fourths of the habitable globe, humanity
still kneels, like the camels, to take upon itself the burthens to be
tamely borne for its tyrants. If a Republic occasionally rises like a
Star, it hastens with all speed to set in blood. The kings need not
make war upon it, to crush it out of their way. It is only neces-
sary to let it alone, and it soon lays violent hands upon itself. And
when a people long enslaved shakes off its fetters, it may well be
incredulously asked,

Shall the braggart shout

For some blind glimpse of Freedom, linfc- itself,
Through madness, hated by the wise, to law,

System and Empire ?

KXIGHT ROSE CROIX. 297

Everywhere in the world labor is, in some shape, the slave of
capital ; generally, a slave to be fed only so long as he can work ;
or, rather, only so long as his work is profitable to the owner of
the human chattel. There are famines in Ireland, strikes and
starvation in England, pauperism and tenement-dens in Xew York,
misery, squalor, ignorance, destitution, the brutality of vice and
the insensibility to shame, of despairing beggary, in all the human
cesspools and sewers everywhere. Here, a sewing-woman fam-
ishes and freezes ; there, mothers murder their children, that those
spared may live upon the bread purchased with the burial allow-
ances 'of the dead starveling; and at the next door young girls
prostitute themselves for food.

Moreover, the Voice says, this besotted race is not satisfied with
seeing its multitudes swept away by the great epidemics whose
causes are unknown, and of the justice or wisdom of which the
human mind cannot conceive. It must also be ever at war. There
has not been a moment since men divided into Tribes, when all
the world was at peace. Always men have been engaged in mur-
dering each other somewhere. Always the armies have lived by
the toil of the husbandman, and war has exhausted the resources,
wasted the energies, and ended the prosperity of Nations. Now it
loads unborn posterity with crushing debt, mortgages all estates,
and brings upon States the shame and infamy of dishonest repudia-
tion.

At times, the baleful fires of war light up half a Continent at
once ; as when all the Thrones unite to compel a people to receive
again a hated and detestable dynasty, or States deny States the
right to dissolve an irksome union and create for themselves a
separate government. Then again the flames flicker and die away,
and the fire smoulders in its ashes, to break out again, after a
time, with renewed and a more concentrated fury. At times, the
storm, revolving, howls over small areas only ; at times its lights
are seen, like the old beacon-fires on the hills, belting the whole
globe. No sea, but hears the roar of cannon ; no river, but runs
red with blood ; no plain, but shakes, trampled by the hoofs of
charging squadrons ; no field, but is fertilized by the blood of the
dead ; and everywhere man slays, the vulture gorges, and the wolf
howls in the ear of the dying soldier. No city is not tortured
by shot and shell ; and no people fail to enact the horrid blas-
phemy of thanking a God of Love for victories and carnage. Te

298 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Deums are still sung for the Eve of St. Bartholomew and the Sicilian
Vespers. Man's ingenuity is racked, and all his inventive powers
are tasked, to fabricate the infernal enginery of destruction, by
which human bodies may be the more expeditiously and effectually
crushed, shattered, torn, and mangled; and yet hypocritical Hu-
manity, drunk with blood and drenched with gore, shrieks to
Heaven at a single murder, perpetrated to gratify a revenge not
more unchristian, or to satisfy a cupidity not more ignoble, than
those which are the promptings of the Devil in the souls of Nations.
When we have fondly dreamed of Utopia and the Millennium,
when we have begun almost to believe that man is not, after all, a
tiger half tamed, and that the smell of blood will not wake the sav-
age within him, we are of a sudden startled from the delusive
dream, to find the thin mask of civilization rent in twain and thrown
contemptuously away. We lie down to sleep, like the peasant on
the lava-slopes of Vesuvius. The mountain has been so long inert,
that we believe its fires extinguished. Round us hang the cluster-
ing grapes, and the green leaves of the olive tremble in the soft
night-air over us. Above us shine the peaceful, patient stars. The
crash of a new eruption wakes us, the roar of the subterranean thun-
ders, the stabs of the volcanic lightning into the shrouded bosom
of the sky ; and we see, aghast, the tortured Titan hurling up its
fires among the pale stars, its great tree of smoke and cloud, the
red torrents pouring down its sides. The roar and the shriekings
of Civil War are all around us : the land is a pandemonium : man
is again a Savage. The great armies roll along their hideous
waves, and leave behind them smoking and depopulated deserts.
The pillager is in every house, plucking even the morsel of bread
from the lips of the starving child. Gray hairs are dabbled in
blood, and innocent girlhood shrieks in vain to Lust for mercy.
Laws, Courts, Constitutions, Christianity, Mercy, Pity, disappear.
God seems to have abdicated, and Moloch to reign in His stead ;
while Press and Pulpit alike exult at universal murder, and urge
the extermination of the Conquered, by the sword and the flaming
torch ; and to plunder and murder entitles the human beasts of
prey to the thanks of Christian Senates.

Commercial greed deadens the nerves of sympathy of Nations,
and makes them deaf to the demands of honor, the impulses of
generosity, the appeals of those who suffer under injustice. Else-
where, the universal pursuit of wealth dethrones God and pays

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 299

divine honors to Mammon and Baalzebub. Selfishness rules su-
preme : to win wealth becomes the whole business of life. The villa-
nies of legalized gaming and speculation become epidemic ; treach-
ery is but evidence of shrewdness ; office becomes the prey of suc-
cessful faction ; the Country, like Actseon, is torn by its own
hounds, and the villains it has carefully educated to their trade,
most greedily plunder it, when it is in extremis.

By what right, the Voice demands, does a creature always
engaged in the work of mutual robbery and slaughter, and who
makes his own interest his God, claim to be of a nature superior
to the savage beasts of which he is the prototype ?

Then the shadows of a horrible doubt fall upon the soul that
would fain love, trust and believe ; a darkness, of which this that
surrounded you was a symbol. It doubts the truth of Revelation,
its own spirituality, the very existence of a beneficent God. It
asks itself if it is not idle to hope for any great progress of Human-
ity toward perfection, and whether, when it advances in one re-
spect, it does not retrogress in some other, by way of compensation :
whether advance in civilization is not increase of selfishness :
whether freedom does not necessarily lead to license and anarchy :
whether the destitution and debasement of the masses does not in-
evitably follow increase of population and commercial and manu-
facturing prosperity. It asks itself whether man is not the sport
of a blind, merciless Fate : whether all philosophies are not delu-
sions, and all religions the fantastic creations of human vanity and
self-conceit ; and, above all, whether, when Reason is abandoned as
a guide, the faith of Buddhist and Brahmin has not the same
claims to sovereignty and implicit, unreasoning credence, as any
other.

He asks himself whether it is not, after all, the evident and pal-
pable injustices of this life, the success and prosperity of the Bad,
the calamities, oppressions, and miseries of the Good, that are the
bases of all beliefs in a future state of existence ? Doubting man's
capacity for indefinite progress here, he doubts the possibility of it
anywhere; and if he does not doubt whether God exists, and is
just and beneficent, he at least cannot silence the constantly recur-
ring whisper, that the miseries and calamities of men, their lives
and deaths, their pains and sorrows, their extermination by war
and epidemics, are phenomena of no higher dignity, significance,
and importance, in the eye of God, than what things of the same
nature occur to other organisms of matter ; and that the fish of

300 MORALS AND DOGMA.

the ancient seas, destroyed by myriads to make room for other spe-
cies, the contorted shapes in which they are found as fossils
testifying to their agonies ; the coral insects, the animals and
birds and vermin slain by man, have as much right as he to clam-
or at the injustice of the dispensations of God, and to demand an
immortality of life in a new universe, as compensation for their
pains and sufferings and untimely death in this world.

This is not a picture painted by the imagination. Many a
thoughtful mind has so doubted and despaired. How many of us
can say that our own faith is so well grounded and complete that
we never hear those painful whisperings within the soul ? Thrice
blessed are they who never doubt, who ruminate in patient con-
tentment like the kine, or doze under the opiate of a blind faith ;
on whose souls never rests that Awful Shadow which is the ab-
sence of the Divine Light.

To explain to themselves the existence of Evil and Suffering,
the Ancient Persians imagined that there were two Principles or
Deities in the Universe, the one of Good and the other of Evil, con-
stantly in conflict with each other in struggle for the mastery, and
alternately overcoming and overcome. Over both, for the SAGES,
was the One Supreme ; and for them Light was in the end to pre-
vail over Darkness, the Good over the Evil, and even Ahriman and
his Demons to part with their wicked and vicious natures and
share the universal Salvation. It did not occur to them that the
existence of the Evil Principle, by the consent of the Omnipotent
Supreme, presented the same difficulty, and left the existence of
Evil as unexplained as before. The human mind is always con-
tent, if it can remove a difficulty a step further off. It cannot
believe that the world rests on nothing, but is devoutly content
when taught that it is borne on the back of an immense elephant,
who himself stands on the back of a tortoise. Given the tortoise,
Faith is always satisfied ; and it has been a great source of happi-
ness to multitudes that they could believe in a Devil who could
relieve God of the odium of being the Author of Sin.

But not to all is Faith sufficient to overcome this great diffi-
culty. They say, with the Apostle, "Lord! I believe!" — but like
him they are constrained to add, "Help Thou my unbelief!" — Rea-
son must, for these, co-operate and coincide with Faith, or they
remain still in the darkness of doubt," — most miserable of all con-
ditions of the human mind.

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 30!

Those, only, who care for nothing beyond the interests and pur-
suits of this life, are uninterested in these great Problems. The
animals, also, do not consider them. It is the characteristic of an
immortal Soul, that it should seek to satisfy itself of its immortal-
ity, and to understand this great enigma, the Universe. If the
Hottentot and the Papuan are not troubled and tortured by these
doubts and speculations, they are not, for that, to be regarded as
either wise or fortunate. The swine, also, are indifferent to the
great riddles of the Universe, and are happy in being wholly un-
aware that it is the vast Revelation and Manifestation, in Time and
Space, of a Single Thought of the Infinite God.

Exalt and magnify Faith as we will, and say that it begins where
Reason ends, it must, after all, have a foundation, either in Reason,
Analog}-, the Consciousness, or human testimony. The worship-
per of Brahma also has implicit Faith in what seems to us palpa-
bly false and absurd. His faith rests neither in Reason, Analogy,
or the Consciousness, but on the testimony of his Spiritual teach-
ers, and of the Holy Books. The Moslem also believes, on the
positive testimony of the Prophet ; and the Mormon also can
say, "I believe this, because it is impossible." No faith, however ab-
surd or degrading, has ever wanted these foundations, testimony,
and the books. Miracles, proven by unimpeachable testimony
have been used as a foundation for Faith, in every age ; and the
modern miracles are better authenticated, a hundred times, than
the ancient ones.

So that, after all, Faith must flow out from some source within
us, \vhen the evidence of that which we are to believe is not pre-
sented to our senses, or it will in no case be the assurance of the
truth of what is believed.

The Consciousness, or inhering and innate conviction, or the
instinct divinely implanted, of the- verity of things, is the highest
possible evidence, if not the only real proof, of the verity of certain
things, but only of truths of a limited class.

What we call the Reason, that is, our imperfect human reason,
not only may, but assuredly will, lead us away from the Truth in
regard to things invisible and especially those of the Infinite, if
we determine to believe nothing but that which it can demonstrate,
or not to believe that which it can by its processes of logic prove
to be contradictory, unreasonable, or absurd. Its tape-line cannot
measure the arcs of Infinity. For example, to the Human reason,

3O2 MORALS AND DOGMA.

an Infinite Justice and an Infinite Mercy or Love, in the same Be-
ing, are inconsistent and impossible. One, it can demonstrate,
necessarily excludes the other. So it can demonstrate that as the
Creation had a beginning, it necessarily follows that an Eternity
had elapsed before the Deity began to create, during which He
was inactive.

When we gaze, of a moonless clear night, on the Heavens glit-
tering with stars, and know that each fixed star of all the myriads
is a Sun, and each probably possessing its retinue of worlds, all
peopled with living beings, we sensibly feel our own unimportance
in the scale of Creation, and at once reflect that much of what has
in different ages been religious faith, could never have been be-
lieved, if the nature, size, and distance of those Suns, and of our
own Sun, Moon, and Planets, had been known to the Ancients as
they are to us.

To them, all the lights of the firmament were created only to
give light to the earth, as its lamps or candles hung above it. The
earth was supposed to be the only inhabited portion of the Uni-
verse. The world and the Universe were synonymous terms. Of
the immense size and distance of the heavenly bodies, men had
no conception. The Sages had, in Chaldaea, Egypt, India, China,
and in Persia, and therefore the sages always had, an esoteric
creed, taught only in the mysteries and unknown to the vulgar. No
Sage, in either country, or in Greece or Rome, believed the popular
creed. To them the Gods and the Idols of the Gods were sym-
bols, and symbols of great and mysterious truths.

The Vulgar imagined the attention of the Gods to be continu-
ally centred upon the earth and man. The Grecian Divinities in-
habited Olympus, an insignificant mountain of the Earth. There
was the Court of Zeus, to which Neptune came from the Sea, and
Pluto and Persephone from the glooms of Tartarus in the unfath-
omable depths of the Earth's bosom. God came down from
Heaven and on Sinai dictated laws for the Hebrews to His servant
Moses. The Stars were the guardians of mortals whose fates and
fortunes were to be read in their movements, conjunctions, and
oppositions. The Moon was the Bride and Sister of the Sun, at
the same distance above the Earth, and, like the Sun, made for the
service of mankind alone.

If, with the great telescope of Lord Rosse, we ex'amine the vast
nebulae of Hercules, Orion, and Andromeda, and find them re-

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 303

solvable into Stars more numerous than the sands on the sea-
shore; if we reflect that each of these Stars is a Sun, like and
even many times larger than ours, — each, beyond a doubt, with its
retinue of worlds swarming with life ; — if we go further in imagi-
nation, and endeavor to conceive of all the infinities of space,
filled with similar suns and worlds, we seem at once to shrink intc
an incredible insignificance.

The Universe, which is the uttered Word of God, is infinite in
extent. There is no empty space beyond creation on any side.
The Universe, which is the Thought of God pronounced, never
was no t, since God never was inert ; nor WAS, without thinking and
creating. The forms of creation change, the suns and worlds live
and die like the leaves and the insects, but the .Universe itself is
infinite and eternal, because God Is, Was, and Will forever Be, and
never did not think and create.

Reason is fain to admit that a Supreme Intelligence, infinitely
powerful and wise, must have created this boundless Universe ;
but it also tells us that we are as unimportant in it as the zoophytes
and entozoa, or as the invisible particles of animated life that float
upon the air or swarm in the water-drop.

The foundations of our faith, resting upon the imagined inter-
est of God in our race, an interest easily supposable when man
believed himself the only intelligent created being, and therefore
eminently worthy the especial care and watchful anxiety of a God
who had only this earth to look after, and its house-keeping alone
to superintend, and who was content to create, in all the infinite
Universe, only one single being, possessing a soul, and not a mere
animal, are rudely shaken as the Universe broadens and expands
for us ; and the darkness of doubt and distrust settles heavy upon
the Soul.

The modes in which it is ordinarily endeavored to satisfy our
doubts, only increase them. To demonstrate the necessity for a
cause of the creation, is equally to demonstrate the necessity of a
cause for that cause. The argument from plan and design only
removes the difficulty a step further off. We rest the world on
the elephant, and the elephant on the tortoise, and the tortoise on
— nothing.

To tell us that the animals possess instinct only and that Rea-
son belongs to us alone, in no way tends to satisfy us of the radi-
cal difference between us and them. For if the mental phenomena

304 MORALS AND DOGMA.

exhibited by animals that think, dream, remember, argue from
cause to effect, plan, devise, combine, and communicate their
thoughts to each other, so as to act rationally in concert, — if their
love, hate, and revenge, can be conceived of as results of the or-
ganization of matter, like color and perfume, th-e resort to the
hypothesis of an immaterial Soul to explain phenomena of the
same kind, only more perfect, manifested by the human being, is
supremely absurd. That organized matter can think or even feel,
at all, is the great insoluble mystery. "Instinct" is but a word
without a meaning, or else it means inspiration. It is either the
animal itself, or God in the animal, that thinks, remembers, and
reasons ; and instinct, according to the common acceptation of the
term, would be the greatest and most wonderful of mysteries, —
no less a thing than the direct, immediate, and continual prompt-
ings of the Deity, — for the animals are not machines, or automata
moved by springs, and the ape is but a dumb Australian.

Must we always remain in this darkness of uncertainty, of
doubt? Is there no mode of escaping from the labyrinth except
by means of a blind faith, wKich explains nothing, and in many
creeds, ancient and modern, sets Reason at defiance, and leads to
the belief either in a God without a Universe, a Universe without
a God, or a Universe which is itself a God ?

We read in the Hebrew Chronicles that Schlomoh the wise
King caused to be placed in front of the entrance to the Temple
two huge columns of bronze, one of which was called YAKAYIN
and the other BAHAZ ; and these words are rendered in our ver-
sion Strength and Establishment. The Masonry of the Blue
Lodges gives no explanation of these symbolic columns ; nor do
the Hebrew Books advise us that they were symbolic. If not so
intended as symbols, they were subsequently understood to be
such.

But as we are certain that everything within the Temple was
symbolic, and that the whole structure was intended to represent
the Universe, we may reasonably conclude that the columns of the
portico also had a symbolic signification. It would be tedious to
repeat all the interpretations which fancy or 'dullness has found
for them.

The key to their true meaning is not undiscoverable. The per-
fect and eternal distinction of the two primitive terms of the cre-
ative syllogism, in order to attain to the demonstration of their

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 305

harmony by the analogy of contraries, is the second grand prin-
ciple of that occult philosophy veiled under the name "Kabalah,"
and indicated by all the sacred hieroglyphs of the Ancient Sanctu-
aries, and of the rites, so little understood by the mass of the
Initiates, of the Ancient and Modern Free-Masonry.

The Sohar declares that everything in the Universe proceeds by
the mystery of "the Balance," that is, of Equilibrium. Of the
Sephiroth, or Divine Emanations, Wisdom and Understanding,
Severity and Benignity, or Justice and Mercy, and Victory and
Glory, constitute pairs.

Wisdom, or the Intellectual Generative Energy, and Under-
standing, or the Capacity to be impregnated by the Active Energy
and produce intellection or thought, are represented symbolically
in the Kabalah as male and female. So also are Justice and
Mercy. Strength is the intellectual Energy or Activity; Estab-
lishment or Stability is the intellectual Capacity to produce, a
passivity. They are the POWER of generation and the CAPACITY
of production. By WISDOM, it is said, God creates, and by UN-
DERSTANDING establishes. These are the two Columns of the
Temple, contraries like the Man and Woman, like Reason and
Faith, Omnipotence and Liberty, Infinite Justice and Infinite
Mercy, Absolute Power or Strength to do even what is most un-
just and unwise, and Absolute Wisdom that makes it impossible to
do it ; Right and Duty. They were the columns of the intellectual
and moral world, the monumental hieroglyph of the antinomy
necessary to the grand law of creation.

There must be for every Force a Resistance to support it, to
every light a shadow, for every Royalty a Realm to govern, for
every affirmative a negative.

For the Kabalists, Light represents the Active Principle, and
Darkness or Shadow is analogous to the Passive Principle. There-
fore it was that they made of the Sun and Moon emblems of the
two Divine Sexes and the two creative forces ; therefore, that they
ascribed to woman the Temptation and the first sin, and then the
first labor, the maternal labor of the redemption, because it is
from the bosom of the darkness itself that we see the Light born
again. The Void attracts the Full : and so it is that the abyss of
poverty and misery, the Seeming Evil, the seeming empty noth-
ingness of life, the temporary rebellion of the creatures, eternally
attracts the overflowing ocean of being, of riches, of pity, and of

306 MORALS AND DOGMA.

love. Christ completed the Atonement on the Cross by descend-
ing into Hell.

Justice and Mercy are contraries. If each be infinite, their co-
existence seems impossible, and being equal, one cannot even
annihilate the other and reign alone. The mysteries of the Divine
Nature are beyond our finite comprehension ; but so indeed are
the mysteries of our own finite nature; and it is certain that in
all nature harmony and movement are the result of the equilibrium
of opposing or contrary forces.

The analogy of contraries gives the solution of the most inter-
esting and most difficult problem of modern philosophy, — the
definite and permanent accord of Reason and Faith, of Author-
ity and Liberty of examination, of Science and Belief, of Perfec-
tion in God and Imperfection in Man. If science or knowledge
is the Sun, Belief is the Man ; it is a reflection of the day in the
night. Faith is the veiled Isis, the Supplement of Reason, in the
shadows which precede or follow Reason. It emanates from the
Reason, but can never confound it nor be confounded with it. The
encroachments of Reason upon Faith, or of Faith on Reason, are
eclipses of the Sun or Moon ; when they occur, they make useless
both the Source of Light and its reflection, at once.

Science perishes by systems that are nothing but beliefs ; and
Faith succumbs to reasoning. For the two Columns of the Tem-
ple to uphold the edifice, they must remain separated and be
parallel to each other. As soon as it is attempted by violence to
bring them together, as Samson did, they are overturned, and the
whole edifice falls upon the head of the rash blind man or the
revolutionist whom personal or national resentments have in ad-
vance devoted to death.

Harmony is the result of an alternating preponderance of
forces. Whenever this is wanting in government, government is
a failure, because it is either Despotism or Anarchy. All theoret-
ical governments, however plausible the theory, end in one or the
other. Governments that are to endure are not made in the closet
of Locke or Shaftesbury, or in a Congress or a Convention. In a
Republic, forces that seem contraries, that indeed are contraries,
alone give movement and life. The Spheres are held in their
orbits and made to revolve harmoniously and unerringly, by the
concurrence, which seems to be the opposition, of two contrary
forces. If the centripetal force should overcome the centrifugal,

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 307

and the equilibrium of forces cease, the rush of the Spheres to the
Central Sun would annihilate the system. Instead of consolida-
tion, the whole would be shattered into fragments.

Man is a free agent, though Omnipotence is above and all
around him. To be free to do good, he must be free to do evil.
The Light necessitates the Shadow. A State is free like an indi-
vidual in any government worthy of the name. The State is less
potent than the Deity, and therefore the freedom of the individual
citizen is consistent with its Sovereignty. These are opposites,
but not antagonistic. So, in a union of States, the freedom of the
States is consistent with the Supremacy of the Nation. When
either obtains the permanent mastery over the other, and they
cease to be in equilibria, the encroachment continues with a ve-
locity that is accelerated like that of a falling body, until the
feebler is annihilated, and then, there being no resistance to sup-
port the stronger, it rushes into ruin.

So, when the equipoise of Reason and Faith, in the individual
or the Nation, and the alternating preponderance cease, the result
is, according as one or the other is permanent victor, Atheism or
Superstition, disbelief or blind credulity ; and the Priests either
of Unfaith or of Faith become despotic.

"Whomsoever God loveth, him he chasteneth," is an expression
that formulates a whole dogma. The trials of life are the bless-
ings of life, to the individual or the Nation, if either has a Soul
that is truly worthy of salvation. "Light and darkness," said
ZOROASTER, "are the zvorld's eternal ways." The Light and the
Shadow are everywhere and always in proportion ; the Light being
the reason of being of the Shadow. It is by trials only, by the
agonies of sorrow and the sharp discipline of adversities, that men
and Nations attain initiation. The agonies of the garden of Geth-
semane and those of the Cross on Calvary preceded the Resurrec-
tion and were the means of Redemption. It is with prosperity
that God afflicts Humanity.

The Degree of Rose ^ is devoted to and symbolizes the final
triumph of truth over falsehood, of liberty over slavery, of light
over darkness, of life over death, and of good over evil. The
great truth it inculcates is, that notwithstanding the existence of
Evil, God is infinitely wise, just, and good : that though the affairs
of the world proceed by no rule of right and wrong known to us
in the narrowness of our views, yet all is right, for it is the work oi

308 MORALS AND DOGMA.

God ; and all evils, all miseries, all misfortunes, are but as drops in
the vast current that is sweeping onward, guided by Him, to a
great and magnificent result : that, at the appointed time, He will
redeem and regenerate the world, and the Principle, the Power, and
the existence of Evil will then cease ; that this will be brought
about by such means and instruments as He chooses to employ ;
whether by the merits of a Redeemer that has already appeared, or
a Messiah that is yet waited for, by an incarnation of Himself,
or by an inspired prophet, it does not belong to us as Masons to
decide. Let each judge and believe for himself.

In the mean time, we labor to hasten the coming of that day.
The morals of antiquity, of the law of Moses and of Christianity,
are ours. We recognize every teacher of Morality, every Reformer,
as a brother in this great work. The Eagle is to us the symbol of
Liberty, the Compasses of Equality, the Pelican of Humanity, and
our order of Fraternity. Laboring for these, with Faith, Hope,
and Charity as our armor, we will wait with patience for the final
triumph of Good and the complete manifestation of the Word of
God.

No one Mason has the right to measure for another, within the
walls of a Masonic Temple, the degree of veneration which he shall
feel for any Reformer, or the Founder of any Religion. We teach
a belief in no particular creed, as we teach unbelief in none. What-
ever higher attributes the Founder of the Christian Faith may, in
our belief, have had or not have had, none can deny that He taught
and practised a pure and elevated morality, even at the risk and to
the ultimate loss of His life. He was not only the benefactor of a
disinherited people, but a model for mankind. Devotedly He loved
the children of Israel. To them He came, and to them alone He
preached that Gospel which His disciples afterward carried among
foreigners. He would fain have freed the chosen People from their
spiritual bondage of ignorance and degradation. As a lover of all
mankind, laying down His life for the emancipation of His Breth-
ren, He should be to all, to Christian, to Jew, and to Mahometan,
an object of gratitude and veneration.

The Roman world felt the pangs of approaching dissolution.
Paganism, its Temples shattered by Socrates and Cicero,had spoken
its last word. The God of the Hebrews was 'unknown beyond the
limits of Palestine. The old religions had failed to give happiness
and peace to the world. The babbling and wrangling philosophers

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 309

had confounded all men's ideas, until they doubted of everything
and had faith in nothing : neither in God nor in his goodness and
mercy, nor in the virtue of man, nor in themselves. Mankind was
divided into two great classes, — the master and the slave ; the pow-
erful and the abject, .the high and the low, the tyrants and the
mob; and even the former were satiated with the servility of the
latter, sunken by lassitude and despair to the lowest depths of deg-
radation.

When,lo,a voice, in the inconsiderable Roman Province of Judea
proclaims a new Gospel — a new "God's Word," to crushed, suffer-
ing bleeding humanity. Liberty of Thought, Equality of all men in
the eye of God, universal Fraternity ! a new doctrine, a new
religion ; the old Primitive Truth uttered once again !'

Man is once more taught to look upward to his God. No longer
to a God hid in impenetrable mystery, and infinitely remote from
human sympathy, emerging only at intervals from the darkness to
smite and crush humanity : but a God, good, kind, beneficent, and
merciful : a Father, loving the creatures He has made, with a love
immeasurable and exhaustless ; Who feels for us, and sympathizes
with us, and sends us pain and want and disaster only that they
may serve to develop in us the virtues and excellences that befit us
to live with Him hereafter.

Jesus of Nazareth, the "Son of man," is the expounder of the
new Law of Love. He calls to Him the humble, the poor, the Pariahs
of the world. The first sentence that He pronounces blesses the
world, and announces the new gospel : "Blessed are they that mourn
for they shall be comforted." He pours the oil of consolation and
peace upon every crushed and bleeding heart. Every sufferer is
His proselyte. He shares their sorrows, and sympathizes with all
their afflictions.

He raises up the sinner and the Samaritan woman, and teaches
them to hope for forgiveness. He pardons the woman taken in
adultery. He selects his disciples not among the Pharisees or the
Philosophers, but among the low and humble, even of the fishermen
of Galilee. He heals the sick and feeds the poor. He lives among
the destitute and the friendless. "Suffer little children," He said,
"to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom of Heaven ! Blessed
are the humble-minded, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven ; the
meek, for they shall inherit the Earth ; the merciful, for they shall
obtain mercy ; the pure in heart, for they shall see God ; the peace-

3IO MORALS AND DOGMA.

makers, for they shall be called the children of God ! First be rec-
onciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift at the altar.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of
thee turn not away ! Love your enemies ; bless them that curse you ;
do good to them that hate you ; and pray foe them which despite-
fully use you and persecute you ! All things whatsoever ye would
that men should do to you, do ye also unto them ; for this is the
law and the Prophets ! He that taketh not his cross, and followeth
after Me, is not worthy of Me. A new commandment I give unto
you, that ye love one another : as I have loved you, that ye also love
one another : by this shall all know that ye are My disciples.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friend."

The Gospel of Love He sealed with His life. The cruelty of
the Jewish Priesthood, the ignorant ferocity of the mob, and the
Roman indifference to barbarian blood, nailed Him to the cross,
and He expired uttering blessings upon humanity.

Dying thus, He bequeathed His teachings to man as an ines-
timable inheritance. Perverted and corrupted, they have served as
a basis for many creeds, and been even made the warrant for intol-
erance and persecution. We here teach them in their purity.
They are our Masonry; for to them good men of all creeds can
subscribe.

That God is good and merciful, and loves and sympathizes with
the creatures He has made ; that His finger is visible in all the
movements of the moral, intellectual, and material universe ; that
we are His children, the objects of His paternal care and regard;
that all men are our brothers, whose wants we are to supply, their
errors to pardon, their opinions to tolerate, their injuries to for-
give ; that man has an immortal soul, a free will, a right to free-
dom of thought and action ; that all men are equal in God's sight ;
that we best serve God by humility, meekness, gentleness, kind-
ness, and the other virtues which the lowly can practise as well as
the lofty ; this is "the new Law," the "WORD," for which the
world had waite4 and pined so long; and every true Knight of
the Rose ^ will revere the memory of Him who taught it, and
look indulgently even on those who assign to Him a character far
above his own conceptions or belief, even to the extent of deeming
Him Divine.

Hear Philo, the Greek Jew. "The contemplative soul, une-

KNIGHT ROSE CROIX. 3! I

qually guided, sometimes toward abundance and sometimes to-
ward barrenness, though ever advancing, is illuminated by the
primitive ideas, the rays that emanate from the Divine Intelli-
gence, whenever it ascends toward the Sublime Treasures. When,
on the contrary, it descends, and is barren, it falls within the do-
main of those Intelligences that are termed Angels. . . for, when
the soul is deprived of the light of God, which leads it to the
knowledge of things, it no longer enjoys more than a feeble and
secondary light, which gives it, not the understanding of things,
but that of words only, as in this baser world. . . ."

"... Let the narrow-souled withdraw, having their ears sealed
up ! We communicate the divine mysteries to those only who
have received the sacred initiation, to those who practise true piety,
and who are not enslaved by the empty pomp of words, or the
doctrines of the pagans. ..."

". . . O, ye Initiates, ye whose ears are purified, receive this in
your souls, as a mystery never to be lost ! Reveal it to no Profane !
Keep and contain it within yourselves, as an incorruptible treas-
ure, not like gold or silver, but more precious than everything
besides ; for it is the knowledge of the Great Cause, of Nature, and
of that which is born of both. And if you meet an Initiate, be-
siege him with your prayers, that he conceal from you no new
mysteries that he may know, and rest not until you have obtained
them! For me, although I was initiated in the Great Mysteries
by Moses, the Friend of God, yet, having seen Jeremiah, I recog-
nized him not only as an Initiate, but as a Hierophant ; and I fol-
low his school."

\Ve, like him, recognize all Initiates as our Brothers. We be-
long to no one creed or school. In all religions there is a basis of
Truth ; in all there is pure Morality. All that teach the cardinal
tenets of Masonry we respect ; all teachers and reformers of man-
kind we admire and revere.

Masonry also has her mission to perform. With her traditions
reaching back to the earliest times, and her symbols dating further
back than even the monumental history of Egypt extends, she in-
vites all men of all religions to enlist under her banners and to
war against evil, ignorance, and wrong. You are now her knight,
and to her service your sword is consecrated. May you prove a
worthy soldier in a worthy cause!

21

MORALS AND DOGMA.

COUNCIL OF KADOSH.

XIX.
GRAND PONTIFF.

THE true Mason labors for the benefit of those who are to come
after him, and for the advancement and improvement of his race.
That is a poor ambition which contents itself within the limits of
a single life. All men who deserve to live, desire to survive their
funerals, and to live afterward in the good that they have done
mankind, rather than in the fading characters written in men's
memories. Most men desire to leave some work behind them that
may outlast their own day and brief generation. That is an in-
stinctive impulse, given by God, and often found in the rudest
human heart ; the surest proof of the soul's immortality, and of
the fundamental difference between man and the wisest brutes.
To plant the trees that, after we are dead, shall shelter our children,
is as natural as to love the shade of those our fathers planted.
The rudest unlettered husbandman, painfully conscious of his own
inferiority, the poorest widowed mother, giving her life-blood to
those who pay only for the work of her needle, will toil and stint
themselves to educate their child, that he may take a higher sta-
tion in the world than they ; — and of such are the world's greatest
benefactors.

In his influences that survive him, man becomes immortal, be-
fore the general resurrection. The Spartan mother, who, giving
her son his shield, said, "WITH IT, OR UPON IT !" afterward shared
the government of Lacedaemon with the legislation of Lycurgus :
for she too made a law, that lived after her ; and she inspired the
Spartan soldiery that afterward demolished the walls of Athens,
and aided Alexander to conquer the Orient. The widow who gave
Marion the fiery arrows to burn her own house, that it might no
longer shelter the enemies of her infant country, the house where
she had lain upon her husband's bosom, and where her children
had been born, legislated more effectually for her State than Locke
or Shaftesbury, or than many a Legislature has done, since that
State won its freedom.

It was of slight importance to the Kings" of Egypt and the
312

GRAND PONTIFF. 313

Monarchs of Assyria and Phoenicia, that the son of a Jewish wo-
man, a foundling, adopted by the daughter of Sesostris Ramses,
slew an Egyptian that oppressed a Hebrew slave, and fled into the
desert, to remain there forty years. But Moses, who might other-
wise have become Regent of Lower Egypt, known to us only by a
tablet on a tomb or monument, became the deliverer of the Jews,
and led them forth from Egypt to the frontiers of Palestine, and
made for them a law, out of which grew the Christian faith ; and
so has shaped the destinies of the world. He and the old R?man
lawyers, with Alfred of England, the Saxon Thanes and Xorman
Barons, the old judges and chancellors, and the makers of the
canons, lost in the mists and shadows of the Past, — these are our
legislators ; and we obey the laws that they enacted.

Napoleon died upon the barren rock of his exile. His bones,
borne to France by the son of a King, rest in the Hopital des In-
valides, in the great city on the Seine. His Thoughts still govern
France. He, and not the People, dethroned the Bourbon, and
drove the last King of the House of Orleans into exile. He, in
his coffin, and not the People, voted the crown to the Third Napo-
leon ; and he, and not the Generals of France and England, led
their united forces -against the grim Northern Despotism.

Mahomet announced to the Arabian idolaters the new creed,
"There is but one God, and Mahomet, like Moses and Christ, is His
apostle." For many years unaided, then with the help of his fam-
ily and a few friends, then with many disciples, and last of all
with an army, he taught and preached the Koran. The religion
of the wild Arabian enthusiast converting the fiery Tribes of the
Great Desert, spread over Asia, built up the Saracenic dynasties,
conquered Persia and India, the Greek Empire, Northern Africa,
and Spain, and dashed the surges of its fierce soldiery against the
battlements of Northern Christendom. The law of Mahomet still
governs a fourth of the human race ; and Turk and Arab, Moor
and Persian and Hindu, still obey the Prophet, and pray with their
faces turned toward Mecca ; and he, and not the living, rules and
reigns in the fairest portions of the Orient.

Confucius still enacts th£ law for China ; and the thoughts and
ideas of Peter the Great govern Russia. Plato and the other great
Sages of Antiquity still reign as the Kings of Philosophy, and
have dominion over the human intellect. The great Statesmen
of the Past still preside in the Councils of Nations. Burke still

314 MORALS AND DOGMA.

lingers in the House of Commons ; and Berryer's sonorous tones
will long ring in the Legislative Chambers of France. The in-
fluences of Webster and Calhoun, conflicting, rent asunder the
American States, and the doctrine of each is the law and the ora-
cle speaking from the Holy of Holies for his own State and all
consociated with it: a faith preached and proclaimed by each at
the cannon's mouth and consecrated by rivers of blood.

It has been well said, that when Tamerlane had builded his pyr-
amid of fifty thousand human skulls, and wheeled away with his
vast armies from the gates of Damascus, to find new conquests,
and build other pyramids, a little boy was playing in the streets
of Mentz, son of a poor artisan, whose apparent importance in the
scale of beings was, compared with that of Tamerlane, as that of
a grain of sand to the giant bulk of the earth ; but Tamerlane
and all his shaggy legions, that swept over the East like a hurri-
cane, have passed away, and become shadow's ; while printing, the
wonderful invention of John Faust, the boy of Mentz, has exerted
a greater influence on man's destinies and overturned more thrones
and dynasties than all the victories of all the blood-stained con-
querors from Nimrod to Napoleon.

Long ages ago, the Temple built by Solomon and our Ancient
Brethren sank into ruin, when the Assyrian Armies sacked Jeru-
salem. The Holy City is a mass of hovels cowering under the
dominion of the Crescent ; and the Holy Land a desert. The
Kings of Egypt and Assyria, who were contemporaries of Solomon,
are forgotten, and their histories mere fables. The Ancient Ori-
ent is a shattered wreck, bleaching on the shores of Time. The
Wolf and the Jackal howl among the ruins of Thebes and of
Tyre, and the sculptured images of the Temples and Palaces of
Babylon and Nineveh are dug from their ruins and carried into
strange lands. But the quiet and peaceful Order, of which the
Son of a poor Phoenician Widow was one of the Grand Masters,
with the Kings of Israel and Tyre, has continued to increase in
stature and influence, defying the angry waves of time and the
storms of persecution! Age has not weakened its wide founda-
tions, nor shattered its columns, nor ma*rred the beauty of its har-
monious proportions. Where rude barbarians, in the time of Sol-
omon, peopled inhospitable howling wildernesses, in France and
Britain, and in that New World, not known to Jew or Gentile,
until the glories of the Orient had faded, that Order has builded

GRAND PONTIFF. 315

new Temples, and teaches to its million of Initiates those lessons
of peace, good-will, and toleration, of reliance on God and confi-
dence in man, which it learned when Hebrew and Giblemite
worked side by side on the slopes of Lebanon, and the Servant of
Jehovah and the Phoenician Worshipper of Bel sat with the hum-
ble artisan in Council at Jerusalem.

It is the Dead that govern. The Living only obey. And if
the Soul sees, after death, what passes on this earth, and watches
over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happi-
ness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences
widening out from ?ge to age. as rivulets widen into, rivers, and
aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the
World ; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences
causing mischief and misery, and cursing and afflicting men, long
after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when, both name
and memory are forgotten.

We know not who among the Dead control our destinies. The
universal human race is linked and bound together by those influ-
ences and sympathies, which in the truest sense do make men's
fates. Humanity is the unit, of which the man is but a fraction.
What other men in the Past have done, said, thought, makes the
great iron network of circumstance that environs and controls us
all. We take our faith on trust. We think and believe as the Old
Lords of Thought command us ; and Reason is powerless before
Authority.

We would make or annul a particular contract; but the
Thoughts of the dead Judges of England, living when their ashes
have been cold for centuries, stand between us and that which we
would do, and utterly forbid it. We would settle our estate in a
particular way ; but the prohibition of the English Parliament,
its uttered Thought when the first or second Edward reigned,
comes echoing down the long avenues of time, and tells us we
shall not exercise the power of disposition as we wish. We would
gain a particular advantage of another; and the thought of the
old Roman lawyer who died before Justinian, or that of Rome's
great orator Cicero, annihilates the act, or makes the intention in-
effectual. This act, Moses forbids ; that, Alfred. We would sell
our land ; but certain marks on a perishable paper tell us that our
father or remote ancestor ordered otherwise ; and the arm of the
dead, emerging from the grave, with peremptory gesture prohibits

316 MORALS AND DOGMA.

the alienation. About to sin or err, the thought or wish of our
dead mother, told us when we were children, by words that died
upon the air in the utterance, and many a long year were forgot-
ten, flashes on our memory, and holds us back with a power that
is resistless.

Thus we obey the dead ; and thus shall the living, when we are
dead, for weal or woe, obey us. The Thoughts of the Past are the
Laws of the Present and the Future. That which we say and do,
if its effects last not beyond our lives, is unimportant. That
which shall live when we are dead, as part of the great body of
law enacted by the dead, is the only act worth doing, the only
Thought worth speaking. The desire to do something that shall
benefit the world, when neither praise nor obloquy will reach us
where we sleep soundly in the grave, is the noblest ambition en-
tertained by man.

It is the ambition of a true and genuine Mason. Knowing the
slow processes by which the Deity brings about great results, he
does not expect to reap as well as sow, in a single lifetime. It is
the inflexible fate and noblest destiny, with rare exceptions, of the
great and good, to work, and let others reap the harvest of their
labors. He who does good, only to be repaid in kind, or in thanks
and gratitude, or in reputation and the world's praise, is like him
who loans his money, that he may, after certain months, receive it
back with interest. To be repaid for eminent services with slan-
der, obloquy, or ridicule, or at best with stupid indifference or cold
ingratitude, as it is common, so it is no misfortune, except to those
who lack the wit to see or sense to appreciate the service, or the
nobility of soul to thank and reward with eulogy, the benefactor
of his kind. His influences live, and the great Future will obey ;
whether it recognize or disown the lawgiver.

Miltiades was fortunate that he was exiled ; and Aristides that
he was ostracized, because men wearied of hearing him called "The
Just." Not the Redeemer was unfortunate ; but those only who
repaid Him for the inestimable gift He offered them, and for a life
passed in toiling for their good, by nailing Him upon the cross, as
though He had been a slave or malefactor; The persecutor dies
and rots, and Posterity utters his name with execration : but his
victim's memory he has unintentionally made glorious and im-
mortal.

If not for slander and persecution, the Mason who would bene-

GRAND PONTIFF. 317

«

fit his race must look for apathy and cold indifference in those
whose good he seeks, in those who ought to seek the good of
others. Except when the sluggish depths of the Human Mind
are broken up and tossed as with a storm, when at the appointed
time a great Reformer comes, and a new Faith springs up and
grows with supernatural energy, the progress of Truth is slower
than the growth of oaks ; and he who plants need not expect to
gather. The Redeemer, at His death, had twelve disciples, and
one betrayed and one deserted and denied Him. It is enough for
us to know that the fruit will come in its due season. When, or
who shall gather it, it does not in the least concern us to know.
It is our business to plant the seed. It is God's right to give the
fruit to whom He pleases ; and if not to us, then is our action by
so much the more noble.

To sow, that others may reap ; to work and plant for those who
are to occupy the earth when we are dead ; to project, our influ-
ences far into the future, and live beyond our time ; to rule as the
Kings of Thought, over men who are yet unborn ; to bless with
the glorious gifts of Truth and Light and Liberty those who will
neither know the name of the giver, nor care in what grave his
unregarded ashes repose, is the true office of a Mason and the
proudest destiny of a man.

All the great and beneficent operations of Nature are produced
by slow and often imperceptible degrees. The work of destruction
and devastation only is violent and rapid. The Volcano and the
Earthquake, the Tornado and the Avalanche, leap suddenly into
full life and fearful energy, and smite with an unexpected blow.
Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in a night ; and Lis-
bon fell prostrate before God in a breath, when the earth rocked
and shuddered ; the Alpine village vanishes and is erased at one
bound of the avalanche ; and the ancient forests fall like grass be-
fore the mower, when the tornado leaps upon them. Pestilence
slays its thousands in a day ; and the storm in a night strews the
sand with shattered navies.

The Gourd of the Prophet Jonah grew up, and was withered, in
a night. But many years ago, before the Norman Conqueror
stamped his mailed foot on the neck of prostrate Saxon England,
some wandering barbarian, of the continent then unknown to the
world, in mere idleness, with hand or foot, covered an acorn with
a little earth, and passed on regardless, on .his journey to the dim

318 MORALS AND DOGMA.

•

Past. He died and was forgotten ; but the acorn lay there still,
the mighty force within it acting in the darkness. A tender shoot
stole gently up; and fed by the light and air and frequent dews,
put forth its little leaves, and lived, because the elk or buffalo
chanced not to place his foot upon and crush it. The years
marched onward, and the shoot became a sapling, and its green
leaves went and came with Spring and Autumn. And still the
years came and passed away again, and William, the Norman Bas-
tard, parcelled England out among his Barons, and still the sapling
grew, and the dews fed its leaves, and the birds builded their nests
among its small limbs for many generations. And still the years
came and went, and the Indian hunter slept in the shade of the
sapling, and Richard Lion-Heart fought at Acre and Ascalon, and
John's bold Barons wrested from him the Great Charter; and lo!
the sapling had become a tree; and still it grew, and thrust its
great arms wider abroad, and lifted its head still higher toward
the Heavens ; strong-rooted, and defiant of the storms that roared
and eddied through its branches ; and when Columbus ploughed
with his keels the unknown Western Atlantic, and Cortez and
Pizarro bathed the cross in blood ; and the Puritan, the Huguenot,
the Cavalier, and the follower of Penn sought a refuge and a rest-
ing-place beyond the ocean, the Great Oak still stood, firm-rooted,
vigorous, stately, haughtily domineering over all the forest, heed-
less of all the centuries that had hurried past since the wild Indian
planted the little acorn in the forest ; — a stout and hale old tree,
with wide circumference shading many a rood of ground ; and fit
to furnish timbers for a ship, to carry the thunders of the Great
Republic's guns around the world. And yet, if one had sat and
watched it every instant, from the moment when the feeble shoot
first pushed its way to the light until the eagles built among its
branches, he would never have seen the tree or sapling grow.

Many long centuries ago, before the Chaldsean Shepherds
watched the Stars, or Shufu built the Pyramids, one could have
sailed in a seventy-four where now a thousand islands gem the sur-
face of the Indian Ocean ; and the deep-sea lead would nowhere
have found any bottom. But below these- .waves were myriads
upon myriads, beyond the power of Arithmetic to number, of
minute existences, each a perfect living creature, made by the Al-
mighty Creator, and fashioned by Him for the work it had to do.
There they toiled beneath the waters, each doing its allotted work,

GRAND PONTIFF. 319

and wholly ignorant of the result which God intended. They
lived and died, incalculable in numbers and almost infinite in the
succession of their generations, each adding his mite to the gigan-
tic work that went on there under God's direction. Thus hath He
chosen to create great Continents and Islands ; and still the coral-
insects live and work, as when they made the rocks that underlie
the valley of the Ohio.

Thus God hath chosen to create. Where now is firm land, once
chafed and thundered the great primeval ocean. For ages upon
ages the minute shields of infinite myriads of infusoria, and the
stony stems of encrinites sunk into its depths, and there, under
the vast pressure of its waters, hardened into limestone. Raised
slo\vly from the Profound by His hand, its quarries underlie the
soil of all the continents, hundreds of feet in thickness ; and we,
of these remains of the countless dead, build tombs and palaces,
as the Egyptians, whom we call ancient, built their pyramids.

On all the broad lakes and oceans the Great Sun looks earnestly
and lovingly, and the invisible vapors rise ever up to meet him.
No eye but God's beholds them as they rise. There, in the upper
atmosphere, they are condensed to mist, and gather into clouds,
and float and swim around in the ambient air.t They sail with its
currents, and hover over the ocean, and roll in huge masses round
the stony shoulders of great mountains. Condensed still more by
change of temperature, they drop upon the thirsty earth in gentle
showers, or pour upon it in heavy rains, or storm against its bosom
at the angry Equinoctial. The shower, the rain, and the storm
pass away, the clouds vanish, and the bright stars again shine
clearly upon the glad earth. The rain-drops sink into the ground,
and gather in subterranean reservoirs, and run in subterranean
channels, and bubble up in springs and fountains; and from the
mountain-sides and heads of valleys the silver threads of water
begin their long journey to the ocean. Uniting, they widen into
brooks and rivulets, then into streams and rivers ; and, at last, a
Nile, a Ganges, a Danube, an Amazon, or a Mississippi rolls be-
tween its banks, mighty, majestic, and resistless, creating vast allu-
vial valleys to be the granaries of the world, ploughed by the
thousand keels of commerce and serving as great highways, and
as the impassable boundaries of rival nations ; ever returning tc
the ocean the drops that rose from it in vapor, and descended in
rain and snow and hail upon the level plains and lofty moun-

320 MORALS AND DOGMA.

tains ; and causing him to recoil for many a mile before the head-
long rush of their great tide.

So it is with the aggregate of Human endeavor. As the invis-
ible particles of vapor combine and coalesce to form the mists and
clouds that fall in rain on thirsty continents, and bless the great
green forests and wide grassy prairies, the waving meadows and
the fields by which men live ; as the infinite myriads of drops that
the glad earth drinks are gathered into springs and rivulets and
rivers, to aid in levelling the mountains and elevating the plains,
and to feed the large lakes and restless oceans ; so all Human
Thought, and Speech and Action, all that is done and said and
thought and suffered upon the Earth combine together, and flow
onward in one broad resistless current toward those great results
to which they are determined by the will of God.

We build slowly and destroy swiftly. Our Ancient Brethren
who built the Temples at Jerusalem, with many myriad blows
felled, hewed, and squared the cedars, and quarried the stones, and
carved the intricate ornaments, which were to be the Temples.
Stone after stone, by the combined effort and long toil of Appren-
tice, Fellow-Craft, and Master, the walls arose; slowly the roof
was framed and fashioned ; and many years elapsed, before, at
length, the Houses stood finished, all fit and ready for the Worship
of God, gorgeous in the sunny splendors of the atmosphere of
Palestine. So they were built. A single motion of the arm of a
rude, barbarous Assyr-ian Spearman, or drunken Roman or Gothic
Legionary of Titus, moved by a senseless impulse of the brutal
will, flung in the blazing brand ; and, with no further human
agency, a few short hours sufficed to consume and melt each Tem-
ple to a smoking mass of black unsightly ruin.

Be patient, therefore, my Brother, and wait!

The issues are with God: To do,
Of right belongs to us.

Therefore faint not, nor be weary in well-doing! Be not dis-
couraged at men's apathy, nor disgusted with their follies nor
tired of their indifference ! Care not for returns and results ; but
see only what there is to do, and do it, leaving the results to God !
Soldier of the Cross ! Sworn Knight of Justice, Truth, and Tol-
eration ! Good Knight and True ! be patient an3 work !

The Apocalypse, that sublime Kabalistic and prophetic Sum-

GRAND PONTIFF. 321

mary of all the occult figures, divides its images into three Sep-
tenaries, after each of which there is silence in Heaven. There
are Seven Seals to be opened, that is to say, Seven mysteries to
know, and Seven difficulties to overcome, Seven trumpets to sound,
and Seven cups to empty.

The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth Degree,
the Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone,
and despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. LUCIFER, the
Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit
of Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who
bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble,
sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not! for traditions are full of
Divine Revelations and Inspirations: and Inspiration is not of
one Age nor of one Creed. Plato and Philo, also, were inspired.

The Apocalypse, indeed, is a book as obscure as the Sohar.

It is written hieroglyphically with numbers and images ; and
the Apostle often appeals to the intelligence of the Initiated.
"Let him who hath knowledge, understand! let him who under-
stands, calculate !" he often says, after an allegory or the mention
of a number. Saint John, the favorite Apostle, and the Depositary
of all the Secrets of the Saviour, therefore did not write to be un-
derstood by the multitude.

The Sephar Yezirah, the Sohar, and the Apocalypse are the
completest embodiments of Occultism. They contain more mean-
ings than words ; their expressions are figurative as poetry and
exact as numbers. The Apocalypse sums up, completes, and sur-
passes all the Science of Abraham and of Solomon. The visions
of Ezekiel, by the river Chebar, and of the new Symbolic Temple,
are equally mysterious expressions, veiled by figures of the enig-
matic dogmas of the Kabalah, and their symbols are as little un-
derstood by the Commentators, as those of Free Masonry.

The Septenary is the Crown of the Numbers, because it unites
the Triangle of the Idea to the Square of the Form.

The more the great Hierophants were at pains to conceal their
absolute Science, the more they sought to add grandeur to and
multiply its symbols. The huge pyramids, with their triangular
sides of elevation and square bases, represented their Metaphysics,
founded upon the knowledge of Nature. That knowledge of Na-
ture had for its symbolic key the gigantic form of that huge
Sphinx, which has hollowed its deep bed in the sand, while keep-

322 MORALS AND DOGMA.

ing watch at the feet of the Pyramids. The Seven grand monu-
ments called the Wonders of the World, were the magnificent
Commentaries on the Seven lines that composed the Pyramids,
and on the Seven mystic gates of Thebes.

The Septenary philosophy of Initiation among the Ancients
may be summed up thus :

Three Absolute Principles which are but One Principle: four
elementary forms which are but one ; all forming a Single Whole,
compounded of the Idea and the Form.

The three Principles were these :

i°. BEING is BEING.

In Philosophy, identity of the Idea and of Being or Verity ; in
Religion, the first Principle, THE FATHER.
2°. BEING is REAL.

In Philosophy, identity of Knowing and of Being or Reality ;
in Religion, the LOGOS of Plato, the Demiourgos, the WORD.
3°. BEING is LOGIC.

In Philosophy, identity of the Reason and Reality ; in Religion,
Providence, the Divine Action that makes real the Good, that
which in Christianity we call THE HOLY SPIRIT.

The union of all the Seven colors is the White, the analogous
symbol of the GOOD : the absence of all is the Black, the analogous
symbol of the EVIL. There are three primary colors, Red, Yellow,
and Blue; and four secondary, Orange, Green, Indigo, and Vio-
let ; and all these God displays to man in the rainbow ; and they
have their analogies also in the moral and intellectual world. The
same number, Seven, continually reappears in the Apocalypse,
compounded of three and four; and these numbers relate to the
last Seven of the Sephiroth, three answering to BENIGNITY or
MERCY, SEVERITY or JUSTICE, and BEAUTY or HARMONY; and
four to Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malakoth, VICTORY, GLORY,
STABILITY, and DOMINATION. The same numbers also represent
the first three Sephiroth, KETHER, KHOKMAH, and BAINAH, or
Will, Wisdom, and Understanding, which, with DAATH or Intel-
lection or Thought, are also four, DAATH not being regarded as a
Sephirah, not as the Deity acting, or as a potency, energy, or at-
tribute, but as the Divine Action.

The Sephiroth are commonly figured in the.Kabalah as consti-
tuting a human form, the ADAM KADMON or MACROCOSM. Thus
arranged, the universal law of Equipoise is three times exempli-

GRAND PONTIFF. 323

fied. From that of the Divine Intellectual, Active, Masculine
ENERGY, and the Passive CAPACITY to produce Thought, the
action of THINKING results. From that of BENIGNITY and SE-
VERITY, HARMONY flows ; and from that of VICTORY or an Infi-
nite overcoming, and GLORY, which, being Infinite, would seem to
forbid the existence of obstacles or opposition, results STABILITY
or PERMANENCE, which is the perfect DOMINION of the Infinite
WILL.

The last nine Sepkireth are included in, at the same time that
they have flowed forth from, the first of all, KETHER, or the
CROWN. Each also, in succession flowed from, and yet still re-
mains included in, the one preceding it. The Will of God includes
His Wisdom, and His Wisdom is His Will specially developed and
acting. This Wisdom is the LOGOS that creates, mistaken and
personified by Simon Magus and the succeeding Gnostics. By
means of its utterance, the letter YO~D, it creates the worlds, first
in the Divine Intellect as an Idea, which invested with form be-
came the fabricated World, the Universe of material reality. YO~D
and HE, two letters of the Ineffable Name of the Manifested
Deity, represent the Male and the Female, the Active and the
Passive in Equilibrium, and the VAV completes the Trinity and
the Triliteral Name 1~s,the Divine Triangle, which with the repe-
tition of the He becomes the Tetragrammaton.

Thus the ten Sephiroth contain all the Sacred Numbers, three,
fire, seven, and nine, and the perfect Number Ten, and correspond
with the Tetractys of Pythagoras.

BEING Is BEING, -•»"« 1DK "N"!K, Ahayah Asar Ahayah. This
is the Principle, the "BEGINNING."

In the Beginning was, that is to say, IS, WAS, and WILL BE,
the WORD, that is to say, the REASON that Speaks.

Ev ap-pi r(v 10 Aofoz ! *

The Word is the reason of belief, and in it also is the expression
of the Faith which makes Science a living thing. The Word,
Ao-foc, is the Source of Logic. Jesus is the Word Incarnate. The
accord of the Reason with Faith, of Knowledge with Belief, of
Authority with Liberty, has become in modern times the verita-
ble enigma of the Sphinx.

It is WISDOM that, in the Kabalistic Books of the Proverbs and
Ecclesiasticus. is the Creative Agent of God. Elsewhere in the
Hebrew writings it is nil"!"1 "D1, Debar lahai-ah, the WORD of God

324 MORALS AND DOGMA.

It is by His uttered Word that God reveals Himself to us; not
alone in the visible and invisible but intellectual creation, but also
in our convictions, consciousness, and instincts. Hence it is that
certain beliefs are universal. The conviction of all men that God
is good led to a belief in a Devil, the fallen Lucifer or Light-
bearer, Shaitan the Adversary, Ahriman and Tuphon, as an at-
tempt to explain the existence of Evil, and make it consistent with
the Infinite Power, Wisdom, and Benevolence of God.

Nothing surpasses and nothing equals, as a Summary of all the
doctrines of the Old World, those brief words engraven by
HERMES on a Stone, and known under the name of "The Tablet
of Emerald:" the Unity of Being and the Unity of the Harmo-
nies, ascending and descending, the progressive and proportional
scale of the Word ; the immutable law of the Equilibrium, and
the proportioned progress of the universal analogies ; the relation
of the Idea to the Word, giving the measure of the relation be-
tween the Creator and the Created, the necessary mathematics of
the Infinite, proved by the measures of a single corner of the
Finite; — all this is expressed by this single proposition of the
Great Egyptian Hierophant :

"What is Superior is as that which is Inferior, and what is
Below is as tliat which is Above, to form the Marvels of the
Unity."

XX.

GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC'
LODGES.

THE true Mason is a practical Philosopher, who, under religious
emblems, in all ages adopted by wisdom, builds upor. plans traced
by nature and reason the moral edifice of knowledge. He ought
to find, in the symmetrical relation of all the parts of this rational
edifice, the principle and rule of all his duties, the source of all
his pleasures. He improves his moral nature, becomes a better man,
and finds in the reunion of virtuous men, assembled with pure
views, the means of multiplying his acts of beneficence. Masonry
and Philosophy, without being one and the same thing, have the
same object, and propose to themselves the same end, the worship
of the Grand Architect of the Universe, acquaintance and familiar-
ity with the wonders of nature, and the happiness of humanity
attained by the constant practice of all the virtues.

As Grand Master of all Symbolic Lodges, it is your especial duty
to aid in restoring Masonry to its •.primitive purity. You have be-
come an instructor. Masonry long wandered in error. Instead
of improving, it degenerated from its primitive simplicity, and re-
trograded toward a system, distorted by stupidity and ignorance,
which, unable to construct a beautiful machine, made a complica-
ted one. Less than two hundred years ago, its organization was
simple, and altogether moral, its emblems, allegories, and ceremo-
nies easy to be understood, and their purpose and object readily to
be seen. It was then confined to a very small number of Degrees.
Its constitutions were like those of a Society of Essenes, written
in the first century of our era. There could be seen the primitive
Christianity, organized into Masonry, the school of Pythagoras
without incongruities or absurdities ; a Masonry simple and signifi-
cant, in which it was not necessary to torture the mind to discover
reasonable interpretations ; a Masonry at once religious and philo-
sophical, worthy of a good citizen and an enlightened philanthro-
pist.

Innovators and inventors overturned that primitive simplicity.

22 325

326 MORALS AND DOGMA.

Ignorance engaged in the work of making Degrees, and trifles and
gewgaws and pretended mysteries, absurd or hideous, usurped the
place of Masonic Truth. The picture of a horrid vengeance, the
poniard and the bloody head, appeared in the peaceful Temple of
Masonry, without sufficient explanation of their symbolic meaning.
Oaths out of all proportion with their object, shocked the candi-
date, and then became ridiculous, and were wholly disregarded.
Acolytes were exposed to tests, and compelled to perform acts,
which, if real, would have been abominable; but being mere chi-
meras, were preposterous, and excited contempt and laughter only.
Eight hundred Degrees of one kind and another were invented :'
Infidelity and even Jesuitry were taught under the mask of
Masonry. The rituals even of the respectable Degrees, copied and
mutilated by ignorant men, became nonsensical and trivial ; and
the words so corrupted that it has hitherto been found impossible
to recover many of them at all. Candidates were made to degrade
themselves, and to submit to insults not tolerable to a man of
spirit and honor.

Hence it was that, practically, the largest portion of the Degrees
claimed by the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and before
it by the Rite of Perfection, fell into disuse, were merely commu-
nicated, and their rituals became jejune and insignificant. These
Rites resembled those old palaces and baronial castles, the differ-
ent parts of which, built at different periods remote from one
another, upon plans and according to tastes that greatly varied,
formed a discordant and incongruous whole. Judaism and chiv-
alry, superstition and philosophy, philanthropy and insane hatred
and longing for vengeance, a pure morality and unjust and illegal
revenge, were found strangely mated and standing hand in hand
within the Temples of Peace and Concord ; and the whole system
was one grotesque commingling of incongruous things, of contrasts
and contradictions, of shocking and fantastic extravagances, of parts
repugnant to good taste, and fine conceptions overlaid and disfigured
by absurdities engendered by ignorance, fanaticism, and a senseless
mysticism.

An empty and sterile pomp, impossible indeed to be carried out,
and to which no meaning whatever was attached, with far-fetched
explanations that were either so many stupid platitudes or them-
selves needed an interpreter; lofty titles, arbitrarily assumed, and
to which the inventors had not condescended to attach any expla-

GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC LODGES. 327

nation that should acquit them of the folly of assuming temporal
rank, power, and titles of nobility, made the world laugh, and the
Initiate feel ashamed.

Some of these titles we retain ; but they have with us meanings
entirely consistent with that Spirit of Equality which is the foun-
dation and peremptory law of its being of all Masonry. The
Knight, with us, is he who devotes his hand, his heart, his brain,
to the Science of Masonry, and professes himself the Sworn Soldier
of Truth : the Prince is he who aims to be Chief [Princeps] , first,
leader, among his equals, in virtue and good deeds : the Sovereign
is he who, one of an order whose members are all -Sovereigns, is
Supreme only because the law and constitutions are so, which he
administers, and by which he, like every other brother, is governed.
The titles, Puissant, Potent, Wise, and Venerable, indicate that
power of Virtue, Intelligence, and Wisdom, which those ought to
strive to attain who are placed in high office by the suffrages of
their brethren : and all our other titles and designations have an
esoteric meaning, consistent with modesty and equality, and which
those who receive them should fully understand. As Master of a
Lodge it is your duty to instruct your Brethren that they are all
so many constant lessons, teaching the lofty qualifications which
are required of those who claim them, and not merely idle gew-
gaws worn in ridiculous imitation of the times when the Nobles
and Priests were masters and the people slaves : and that, in all
true Masonry, the Knight, the Pontiff, the Prince, and the Sov-
ereign are but the first among their equals : and the cordon, the
clothing, and the jewel but symbols and emblems of the virtues
required of all good Masons.

The Mason kneels, no longer to present his petition for admittance
or to receive the answer, no longer to a man as his superior, who
is but his brother, but to his God ; to whom he appeals for the rec-
titude of his intentions, and whose aid he asks to enable him to
keep his vows. No one is degraded by bending his knee to God
at the altar, or to receive the honor of Knighthood as Bayard and
Du Guesclin knelt. To kneel for other purposes, Masonry does
not require. God gave to man a head to be borne erect, a port up-
right and majestic. \Ye assemble in our Temples to cherish and
inculcate sentiments that conform to that loftiness of bearing which
the just and upright man is entitled to maintain, and we do not
require those who desire to be admitted among us, ignominiously

3-^ MORALS AND DOGMA.

to bow the head. We respect man, because we respect ourselves
that he may conceive a lofty idea of his dignity as a human being
free and independent. If modesty is a virtue, humility and obsequi-
ousness to man are base: for there is a noble pride which is the
most real and solid basis of virtue. Man should humble himself
before the Infinite God; but not before his erring and imperfect
brother.

As Master of a Lodge, you will therefore be exceedingly careful
that no Candidate, in any Degree, be required to submit to any
degradation whatever ; as has been too much the custom in some
of the Degrees : and take it as a certain and inflexible rule, to which
there is no exception, that real Masonry requires of no man any-
thing to which a Knight and Gentleman cannot honorably, and
without feeling outraged or humiliated, submit.

The Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United
States at length undertook the indispensable and long-delayed task
of revising and reforming the work and rituals of the thirty Degrees
under its jurisdiction. Retaining the essentials of the Degrees and
all the means by which the members recognize one another, it has
sought out and developed the leading idea of each Degree, rejected
the puerilities and absurdities with which many of them were dis-
figured, and made of them a connected system of moral, religious,
and philosophical instruction. Sectarian of no creed, it has yet
thought it not improper to use the old allegories, based on occur-
rences detailed in the Hebrew and Christian books, and drawn
from the Ancient Mysteries of Egypt, Persia, Greece, India, the
Druids and the Essenes, as vehicles to communicate the Great Ma-
sonic Truths ; as it has used the legends of the Crusades, and the
ceremonies of the orders of Knighthood.

It no longer inculcates a criminal and wicked vengeance. It
has not allowed Masonry to play the assassin : to avenge the death
either of Hiram, of Charles the ist, or of Jaques De Molay and the
Templars. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Masonry
has now become, what Masonry at first was meant to be, a Teacher
of Great Truths, inspired by an upright and enlightened reason, a
firm and constant wisdom, and an affectionate, and liberal philan-
thropy.

It is no longer a system, over the composition and arrangement
of the different parts of which.want of reflection .chance, ignorance,
and perhaps motives still more ignoble presided ; a system unsuited

GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC LODGES. 329

to our habits, our manners, our ideas, or the world-wide philan-
thropy and universal toleration of Masonry ; or to bodies small in
number, whose revenues should be devoted to the relief of the un-
fortunate, and not to empty show ; no longer a heterogeneous
aggregate of Degrees, shocking by its anachronisms and contra-
dictions, powerless to disseminate light, information, and moral
and philosophical ideas.

As Master, you will teach those who are under you, and to whom
you will owe your office, that the decorations of many of the De-
grees are to be dispensed with, whenever the expense would inter-
fere with the duties of charity, relief, and benevolence ; and to be
indulged in only by wealthy bodies that will thereby do no wrong
to those entitled to their assistance. The essentials of all the De-
grees may be procured at slight expense; and it is at the option
of even- Brother to procure or not to procure, as he pleases, the
dress, decorations, and jewels of any Degree other than the I4th,
1 8th, 3Oth, and 32d.

We teach the truth of none of the legends we recite. They are to
us but parables and allegories, involving and enveloping Masonic
instruction ; and vehicles of useful and interesting information.
They represent the different phases of the human mind, its efforts
and struggles to comprehend nature, God, the government of the
Universe, the permitted existence of sorrow and evil. To teach
us wisdom, and the folly of endeavoring to explain to ourselves
that which we are not capable of understanding, we reproduce the
speculations of the Philosophers, the Kabalists, the Mystagogues
and the Gnostics. Every one being at liberty to apply our symbols
and emblems as he thinks most consistent with truth and reason
and with his own faith, we give them such an interpretation only
as maybe accepted by all. Our Degrees maybe conferred in France
or Turkey, at Pekin, Ispahan, Rome, or Geneva, in the city of Penn
or in Catholic Louisiana, upon the subject of an absolute govern-
ment or the citizen of a Free State, upon Sectarian or Theist. To
honor the Deity, to regard all men as our Brethren, as children,
equally dear to Him, of the Supreme Creator of the- Universe, and
to make himself useful to society and himself by his labor, are its
teachings to its Initiates in all the Degrees.

Preacher of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, it desires them to
be attained by making men fit to receive them, and by the moral
power of an intelligent and enlightened People. It lays no plots

33° MORALS AND DOGMA.

and conspiracies. It hatches no premature revolutions ; it encour-
ages no people to revolt against the constituted authorities ; but
recognizing the great truth that freedom follows fitness for free
dom as the corollary follows the axiom, it strives to prepare men
to govern themselves.

Where domestic slavery exists, it teaches the master humanity
and the alleviation of the condition of his slave, and moderate cor-
rection and gentle discipline ; as it teaches them to the master of
the apprentice : and as it teaches to the employers of other men,
in mines, manufactories, and workshops, consideration and human-
ity for those who depend upon their labor for their bread, and to
whom want of employment is starvation, and overwork is fever,
consumption, and death.

As Master of a Lodge, you are to inculcate these duties on your
brethren. Teach the employed to be honest, punctual, and faithful
as well as respectful and obedient to all proper orders : but also
teach the employer that every man or wom'an who desires to work,
has a right to have work to do ; and that they, and those who from
sickness or feebleness, loss of limb or of bodily vigor, old age or
infancy, are not able to work, have a right to be fed, clothed, and
sheltered from the inclement elements : that he commits an awful
sin against Masonry and in the sight of God, if he closes his work-
shops or factories, or ceases to work his mines, when they do not
yield him what he regards as sufficient profit, and so dismisses his
workmen and workwomen to starve ; or when he reduces the wages
of man or woman to so low a standard that they and their families
cannot be clothed and fed and comfortably housed ; or by overwork
must give him their blood and life in exchange for the pittance
of their wages : and that his duty as a Mason and Brother per-
emptorily requires him to continue to employ those who else will
be pinched with hunger and cold, or resort to theft and vice : and
to pay them fair wages, though it may reduce or annul his profits or
even eat into his capital ; for God hath but loaned him his wealth,
and made him His almoner and agent to invest it.

Except as mere symbols of the moral virtues and intellectual
qualities, the tools and implements of Masonry belong exclusively
to the first three Degrees. They also, however,' serve to remind the
Mason who has advanced further, that his new rank is based upon
the humble labors of the symbolic Degrees, as they are improperly
termed, inasmuch as all the Degrees are symbolic.

GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC LODGES. 33!

Thus the Initiates are inspired with a just idea of Masonry, to wit,
that it is essentially WORT.C; both teaching and practising LABOR;
and that it is altogether emblematic. Three kinds of work are nec-
essary to the preservation and protection of man and society : man-
ual labor, specially belonging to the three blue Degrees ; labor in
arms, symbolized by the Knightly or chivalric Degrees ; and intel-
lectual labor, belonging particularly to the Philosophical Degrees.

We have preserved and multiplied such emblems as have a true
and profound meaning. We reject many of the old and senseless
explanations. We have not reduced Masonry to a cold metaphy-
sics that exiles everything belonging to the domain of the imagina-
tion. The ignorant, and those /za/^-wise in reality, but owr-wise
in their own conceit, may assail our symbols with sarcasms ; but
they are nevertheless ingenious veils that cover the Truth, respected
by all who know the means by which the heart of man is reached
and his feelings enlisted. The Great Moralists often .had recourse
to allegories, in order to instruct men without repelling them.
But we have been careful not to allow our emblems to be too ob-
scure, so as to require far-fetched and forced interpretations. In
our days, and in the enlightened land in which we live, we do not
need to wrap ourselves in veils so strange and impenetrable, as to
prevent or hinder instruction instead of furthering it ; or to induce
the suspicion that we have concealed meanings which we commu-
nicate only to the most reliable adepts, because they are contrary
to good order or the well-being of society.

The Duties of the Class of Instructors, that is, the Masons of the
Degrees from the 4th to the 8th, inclusive, are, particularly, to per-
fect the younger Masons in the words, signs and tokens and other
work of the Degrees they have received; to explain to them the
meaning of the different emblems, and to expound the moral in-
struction which they convey. And upon their report of proficiency
alone can their pupils be allowed to advance and receive an in-
crease of wages.

The Directors of the Work, or those of the Qth, ioth,and i ith De-
grees are to report to the Chapters upon the regularity, activity and
proper direction of the work of bodies in the lower Degrees, and
what is needed to be enacted for their prosperity and usefulness.
In the Symbolic Lodges, they are particularly charged to stimulate
the zeal of the workmen, to induce them to engage in new labors
and enterprises for the good of Masonrv. their country and mankind,
and to give them fraternal advice when they fall short of their

33-2 MORALS AND DOGMA